The helium crisis seems to be mitigated for the time being, but while I was reading up on the story, I came across a lot of other stories about scarce resources and the genuine fears that we may run out of critical elements in a surprisingly short time. What will we do without these elements? Technology depends on them. And we thought a world without oil would be tough!
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/engineering/news/important-rare-earth-elements#slide-1
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/09/plutonium-238-problem/
Future Coast 
Hi Shelly, me again. Hmm, how to say this? According to a future itself, the critical element we may want to fear running out of is – water. Here’s a rather plangent voicemail from the year 2037 about that: http://futurecoast.org/2037-owens-birthday/
Now, not saying this WILL happen. The voicemails are leaking to us from the cloud of possible futures. But it’s definitely in the mix. More about all this at futurecoast dot org.
Oh forpetesake a voicemail from the future. I think you’ve mistaken this blog for one over at tor.com 😉
No, those folks always make the classic mistake – someBODY going through time. Makes a good story but here IRL it’s _objects_ that make the journey. You can see what they look like at futurecoast.org. If you happen to find one, send us a picture – it’s another voicemail, we’ll decode it for you from the picture. (We can also figure out what year it’s from)
pKnot, we need to talk. That’s some genuine freaky stuff. How do I know you’re not just some troll?
Freaky? I guess. It freaked me out when they announced the Hubble could see billions of years into the past. But I got over it.
In comparison the chronofacts only timeshift 50 years at most.
Happy to talk offline – I’ll ping you. There are some other Coasters you can talk to also.