Impending Resource Depletion Ahead: But We Are Intelligent
Since the beginning of time, human beings have used and consumed natural resources at their own will for their survival and desires.
Although this has gone on for several hundred years, the consumption of natural resources has skyrocketed in the past one hundred years with the advent of the industrial revolution, which created a growing concern for its depletion among Governments and organizations. So what will really happen if our natural resources run out?
What would happen if just crude oil ran out, let alone the other resources? The world is built on oil – it powers transportation, construction and manufacturing. Imagining a world without oil is scary and apocalyptic. The Peak Oil Theory states that oil production is like a curve – it will rise up to a point where the maximum oil production is reached and then it will begin to slide just as fast it had risen. According to the theory, apparently we are very close to the Peak Oil state, while more positive projections indicate that we
will reach it sometime in the next 10 years.
It is certain that oil production is set to decline in the next 10 years and will begin with sharp, continued increases in oil prices and eventually a halt in industrial production. Oil will be too expensive to extract, and if we want to return to the good old days of accessible cheap oil, we’ll probably need newer technology to compensate for the cost.
Since 2005, the cost of wheat and corn has nearly quadrupled. Rice has gone up by 500 percent. These increases indicate both an increase in demand and limited supply of food – we are not producing fast enough to keep up with the demands. According to Dr. Dickson Dispommier of New York, an expert in vertical farming, we are already using 80 percent of the total arable land on the planet and yet by 2030, we’ll have 50 percent greater demand.
Unlike fossil fuel depletion, which may or may not be solved through renewable energy, food has other potential solutions as well. The demand for grain increases with the demand of meat – with better living standards today, people are eating more meat. For example in the 1980s in China, an average person consumed around 20 kilograms of meat but in 2007 this increased to around 50 kilograms of meat. Meat comes from animals, all of which eat grain and other plants. It is known that proportionally meat has fewer calories compared to the grain used to produce it – about 80 percent less. It means that we can just eat the grain without involving the cow – which prevents transportation and maintenance costs as well as yielding more calories.
Although running out of food seems to be a very serious and disastrous situation for all of us, it simply means the price will be much higher; and unless we increase food production, or miraculously decrease the food demand, we will have poverty due to an actual lack of food, not because of corruption or bad management.
The above is just a general overview of handful of problems we are facing in the future. Imagine running out of minable iron or copper. Fossil fuels drive our entire economy - the entire world is built on it.
Like getting old, we have accepted the inevitability of resource depletion. We are doing what we can to deal with the impending situation: encouraging sustainable development, decreasing wasted resources and the inefficiency in using them, discovering new ways to produce energy, and even exploring asteroid mining.
Although human beings could be compared to a virus – reproduce until host is killed – we have intelligence and we have resilience. We may just find the perfect solution or way to survive in this world.
Although this has gone on for several hundred years, the consumption of natural resources has skyrocketed in the past one hundred years with the advent of the industrial revolution, which created a growing concern for its depletion among Governments and organizations. So what will really happen if our natural resources run out?
What would happen if just crude oil ran out, let alone the other resources? The world is built on oil – it powers transportation, construction and manufacturing. Imagining a world without oil is scary and apocalyptic. The Peak Oil Theory states that oil production is like a curve – it will rise up to a point where the maximum oil production is reached and then it will begin to slide just as fast it had risen. According to the theory, apparently we are very close to the Peak Oil state, while more positive projections indicate that we
will reach it sometime in the next 10 years.
It is certain that oil production is set to decline in the next 10 years and will begin with sharp, continued increases in oil prices and eventually a halt in industrial production. Oil will be too expensive to extract, and if we want to return to the good old days of accessible cheap oil, we’ll probably need newer technology to compensate for the cost.
Since 2005, the cost of wheat and corn has nearly quadrupled. Rice has gone up by 500 percent. These increases indicate both an increase in demand and limited supply of food – we are not producing fast enough to keep up with the demands. According to Dr. Dickson Dispommier of New York, an expert in vertical farming, we are already using 80 percent of the total arable land on the planet and yet by 2030, we’ll have 50 percent greater demand.
Unlike fossil fuel depletion, which may or may not be solved through renewable energy, food has other potential solutions as well. The demand for grain increases with the demand of meat – with better living standards today, people are eating more meat. For example in the 1980s in China, an average person consumed around 20 kilograms of meat but in 2007 this increased to around 50 kilograms of meat. Meat comes from animals, all of which eat grain and other plants. It is known that proportionally meat has fewer calories compared to the grain used to produce it – about 80 percent less. It means that we can just eat the grain without involving the cow – which prevents transportation and maintenance costs as well as yielding more calories.
Although running out of food seems to be a very serious and disastrous situation for all of us, it simply means the price will be much higher; and unless we increase food production, or miraculously decrease the food demand, we will have poverty due to an actual lack of food, not because of corruption or bad management.
The above is just a general overview of handful of problems we are facing in the future. Imagine running out of minable iron or copper. Fossil fuels drive our entire economy - the entire world is built on it.
Like getting old, we have accepted the inevitability of resource depletion. We are doing what we can to deal with the impending situation: encouraging sustainable development, decreasing wasted resources and the inefficiency in using them, discovering new ways to produce energy, and even exploring asteroid mining.
Although human beings could be compared to a virus – reproduce until host is killed – we have intelligence and we have resilience. We may just find the perfect solution or way to survive in this world.
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