The struggle for resources has always been at least partially not a struggle to secure the resources themselves, but to control access to them. That is, not the struggle for survival, but for having the power to determine who can survive, and at what cost.
That is a major factor in why renewable energy has not been urgently pursued, and why technology for water purification has not been a top priority in a world of rapidly depleting sources of drinkable water. It is not because the solutions cannot be developed; it is because the dependence on finite resources provides the most powerful instrument imaginable for coercion and control.