1.1 Resources - Are We Running Out?

Question 1

What are resources?

Answer 1

UNESCO - “Materials that occur in nature and are essential or useful to
humans, such as water, air, land, forests, fish and wildlife, topsoil and
minerals.”

EPA – “Land, fish, wildlife, biota, air, water, groundwater, drinking water supplies, and other such resources (including the resources of the
exclusive economic zone), belonging to, managed by, held in trust by,
appertaining to, or otherwise controlled by, the USA, any state or local
government or Indian tribe, or any foreign government.”

Question 2

Why are resources not stable over space and time

Answer 2

Resources can change with human needs.

things that weren’t resources can become resources and vice versa; ex of wild rubber

Question 3

Explain how wild rubber was a resource, then wasn’t one anymore to finally become one again.

Answer 3

1. Wild rubber was originally used by Amerindians to make rubber balls and foot protection
2. In the 18th century, it was used for rain coats, but those rain coats were brittle in the winter and sticky/smelly in the summer
3. No demand for it, no longer a resource
4. 1839: vulcanization of rubber (heated with sulfur; makes it flexible and elastic material) → demand and innovation increases
5. 1887: rubber tires for bikes
6. The price of rubber sky-rockets bc of increasing demand, massive wealth in Amazon
7. 1905-1920: Henry Wickman brings rubber seeds to England and starts plantations in Malaya, for a lot less money
8. WW2: Japan captures the Asian (British) plantations and wild rubber rebounds.
9. After the war, plantations are revived, the cost less, wild rubber collapses.
10. 1930: synthetic rubber, plantation rubber declines
11. Today: 60% of rubber is synthetic, wild rubber isn’t considered a resource.

Question 4

What is the scarcity-development cycle?

Answer 4

→ New resources are created 
→ Prices fall and Demand rises 
→ Easily accessible reserves are exhausted 
→ Scarcity of the resource 
→ Prices rise and R&D is stimulated 
→ Innovation leads to substitution, reuse, recycling 
→ New resources are created
→ ...

Question 5

What are non-renewable resources?

Answer 5

• There is a fixed amount of stock of the resource.
• The resource is depletable.
• OR natural replenishment is too slow aka over geological time
• The availability of non-renewable resources are measured in reserves

Question 6

What are “in place” resources (in terms of non renewable resources) ?

Answer 6

In place resources are the resources that are technically recoverable and economically recoverable.

Question 7

What are proven reserves?

Answer 7

Proven reserves are the known resources profitably extractible with reasonable certainty (90%) given current prices, technology and political conditions.

Question 8

What are potential reserves?

Answer 8

Potential reserves are the profitably extractible resources at a given price.
(don’t care if not technically feasile)

Question 9

If the price of a resource increases, does its proven and potential reserves increase or decrease?

Answer 9

They both increase with price.

Question 10

What is a renewable resource?

Answer 10

• Renewable resources are resources which have a natural replenishment at a non-negligible and useful rate.
• They are public or common property
• Their availability is based on their regeneration rate.
• examples: grow or flow: forests, fish, water, wind, solar

Question 11

What is sustained yield?

Answer 11

Sustained yield is the rate at which you can extract a resource continually without the ability to do so being compromised.

Question 12

What are recyclable resources?

Answer 12

Recyclable resources are resources that exist in a form that allow them to recover once their original purpose has been fulfilled. (ex metals)

Question 13

What is the Malthusian View? (on population and resources)

Answer 13

Increase of world population and resource scarcity are very serious problems.

Question 14

What is carrying capacity?

Answer 14

• Carrying capacity is the maximum population that an environment can sustain without the population collapsing.
• Carrying capacity is related to a given species in a given environment, it differs between species and environments

Question 15

What is the Marx (and neo-Marxist) view? (on population and resources)

Answer 15

• Population growth and resource scarcity is not a serious problem; it distracts us from the real problem which is the maldistribution of resources.
• They are not a problem because technology and trade can modify the carrying capacity upward.

Question 16

What is the Cornucopian, Techno-Optimist view? (on population and resources)

Answer 16

• Yes, resource scarcity and population growth is a problem, however we have always overcome it throughout history.
• The solution to resource scarcity is population and economic growth because human knowledge and ingenuity are the ultimate resource.
• Therefore, controlling population growth would be unwarranted, unwise and immoral
• (the carrying capacity can increase with technology and trade)

Question 17

Resources can be substitutable or non-substitutable and renewable or non-renewable.
Give examples of a substitutable non-renewable resource.

Answer 17

Fossil fuels + minerals

Question 18

Resources can be substitutable or non-substitutable and renewable or non-renewable.
Give an example of a non-substitutable and non-renewable resource.

Answer 18

time

Question 19

Resources can be substitutable or non-substitutable and renewable or non-renewable.
Give examples of a substitutable renewable resource.

Answer 19

Fish, food, ground water

Question 20

Resources can be substitutable or non-substitutable and renewable or non-renewable.
Give examples of a non-substitutable renewable resource.

Answer 20

Stratospheric ozone, fresh water, top soil.

Question 21

What is the deal with energy (fossil fuels) and minerals?

Answer 21

Oil reserves are running out quickly and energy demand is very likely to grow in years to come. However there are substitutable energies to fossil fuels that are renewable that can solve this problem.

As for minerals, they are not running out as fast as oil. But, they are distributed in tiny quantities across the world; once they are discarded it is very hard to extract and recover them. Minerals are more recyclable than fossil fuels however it is not easy to do so.

Question 22

What is the deal with trees and fish being a substitutable resource?

Answer 22

Trees and fish resources can be substituted as a food source, but not substituted as a source of important ecosystem functions.

Question 23

What is the deal with ground water?

Answer 23

Although technically renewable and substitutable, if we extract ground eater at a rate that exceeds the rate of replenishment it will become a non-renewable resource. Once a reservoir is depleted, it takes several thousand years to replenish.

Question 24

What is the deal with fresh water?

Answer 24

Although renewable, in lots of places around the world the reserves of fresh water are stressed and there are shortages.

Question 25

Summary deal with ground water and fresh water

Answer 25

While fresh water and ground water are both renewable, in reality they are very sterssed.

Question 26

What is the deal with topsoil?

Answer 26

Topsoil is a renewable resource in theory, but in reality the very high rates of degradation and erosion of topsoil surpass the rate at which topsoil recovers itself

Question 27

Summary problem with theoretically renewable resources and non renewables resources.

Answer 27

Paradoxically, non renewable resources may not be as stressed as renewable resources are.
We may be running out of non-renewable resources slower than we are running out of sinks