Well, as I said in my essay, it is brought about more by our inability to access what resources are available and manage them wisely than it is brought about by the capitalist, consumerist system. After all, people were experiencing scarcity and poverty before any such economic system as capitalism evolved. One can even argue that capitalism has done more to provide us with better technologies to access resources and so raise standards of living than any other system. But, yes, in some ways consumerism does depend upon continued scarcity.