Moving forward to the past, with adaptation and flexibility: the special role of resource storage

This chapter describes three paradigms in human-nature interactions with respect to the role of “resource storage.” The first paradigm is pre-Industrial Revolution, when humans had learned adaptation to the nature variability through storage of resources at oversupply periods. The second paradigm is post-Industrial Revolution, when access to reliable source of fossil fuels reduced the dependence on the nature and led to baseload industries and lifestyles, which were less and less in harmony with the nature’s cycles. The new paradigm, after notably damaging the biosphere, is the “move forward to the past” with adjusting the lifestyle and the industrial practices with the nature’s constraints through flexible manufacturing and consumption behavioral change in which energy storage and waste recycle play critical roles.