With rising exponential pressures in the Anthropocene, there is a question of whether or not we are running into resource constraints or passing the peak of resource availability for humanity. The need to stay within global budgets of fundamental resources that determine our ability for social and economic development means we must connect biophysical analyses with issues of development. Graphs and illustrations are used to show the influence of human pressures and population on biophysical systems. At out current pace of resource exploitation, we will run into, or pass, the peak of resource availability within this century. This will have an impact on the economy in terms of shocks and high prices. Planetary boundaries have direct relevance across scales, and are increasingly downscaled to the local ecosystem level; examples are given. There is a distributional issue of boundaries; poor developing nations often are within a safe operating space and have a right and need to increase their use of resources, while rich nations need to drastically reduce their use.

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