Energy, Natural Resources and Sustainability
Introduction
Our existence depends on resources that we as humans utilize in order to sustain our livelihoods. Many of the resources most critical to our existence occur naturally in the world around us, and are not created by humans. The foods we eat are natural resources, as is water which we not only drink but use in a variety of other ways in order to go about many of our activities. The air we breathe and the atmosphere that surrounds are natural resources. Most of the energy resources we utilize also occur naturally including crude oil, coal, minerals and again water.
Energy
Energy is essential to produce the goods we consume, to power the vehicles, machinery and electronics we use and to provide the heat and electricity that we consume as humans in our daily lives. Energy is so vital to modern societies that the relative ability of countries to produce, acquire and consume energy directly impacts standards of living with respect to finances and is responsible for dividing the world into first, second, and third world countries.
The major energy source that is currently used to drive economies in the modern world is crude oil. The desire for first world countries to acquire oil is so strong that it is a prevailing influence on foreign policy between them and the oil-producing nations where deposits of crude oil are most abundant. These policies aim to protect the ability of first world nations to acquire oil, often coming at the detriment of the oil-producing countries.
Water
While energy is vital to economic development, water is a basic nutrient and resource critical to all life on earth. For humans, freshwater is necessary for our survival. We drink it for sustenance, and use it for cooking, cleaning, industrial processes and a variety of other functions.
There has been a recent trend towards the privatization of freshwater, in other words to commodify water and turn it into a good that can be bought and sold. There is extensive debate as to the merits of this practice. Charging for water limits the ability to acquire it by the amount of money a person has. This makes water scarcity an even larger issue for the portion of the planet where a limited ability to acquire clean, safe sanitary water is already affecting quality of life and survival in these circumstances. The privatization of water could very well drastically increase consumption, eventually making scarcity and accessibility an issue across the globe.
While freshwater use greatly impacts humanity and the world around us, our utilization of salt waters in our seas and oceans are also immensely important. Our use of these waters and the resources within them impact our present and our future.
Consumption and Resource Limitation
The rate at which we consume resources affects the amount of available resource that remains. It is common knowledge that some resources are non-renewable while others are renewable. Minerals and fossil fuels including crude oil and coal for example are non-renewable resources which cannot be replenished. We have reached a point known as peak oil where we have extracted 50% of all crude oil deposits from the earth.
Many of our natural resources are renewable meaning that replenishment after removal is possible. Such resources include water, vegetation, nitrogen and oxygen gases in the air. All these resources have cycles where naturally occurring processes replenish the natural environment after they these resources have been removed. However these replenishment processes are limited and for virtually all of the resources we consume we are removing them at higher rates than replenishment processes can keep pace with. As a result of our over-consumption even our renewable resources are rapidly becoming non-renewable.
Pollution
In addition to over-consumption reducing the amount of natural resources we have left, pollution also destroys resources. Pollution is the release of chemical, physical, biological or radioactive contaminants to the environment. The ways in we acquire, process and consume resources often involve pollution as a consequence. We are currently experiencing air pollution (including greenhouse gases and global warming), ground and soil pollution as well as many other forms. Pollution can contaminate resources to the point that they can no longer be used.
Ecological Sustainability
The over-consumption and pollution of natural resources by humans threatens
their long-term existence and ability to be utilized by both human and
non-human life. As a result, the concept of ecological sustainability
has emerged. This involves configuring civilization and human activity
so that society, its members and its economies are able to meet their
needs and express their greatest potential in the present, while preserving
biodiversity and natural ecosystems, and planning and acting for the ability
to maintain these ideals in a very long term. By altering our behaviour
in our daily lives as well as our broader industrial and economic activities,
we can ensure that natural resources remain viable for all life in generations
to come.