Will we ever run out of resources?

[Someone here]

Billions of people all using up so many resources for so many things, like how can we just keep extracting these seemingly endless amounts of wood, oil, minerals and metals and still have plenty to extract for the next 100 years?

I know that The earth is really really really big. Thats really it, the earth is astronomically (pardon the pun) huge.

We only take up a fraction of its surface area. Dont get me wrong we are getting there, we are facing some pretty serious shortages in the next couple centuries, but we have got this far simple because the earth is huge and has a huge amount of Resources to start with.

But can't we run out of water? Food? Electricity? Money? I want to understand how we didn't run out of resources for all those centuries? 

[trenton]

@Someone here good questions. There are a lot of factors that contribute to this. 

First of all, the global population is much higher and we are using our resources faster. Secondly, as societies evolved we became more dependent on various energy sources. Thirdly, climate change induced droughts are causing wars and there are likely to be many more of these water wars in the future.

Humans used to rely on wood for energy much more often. It wasn't until much later that we started using oil. As technology evolved so too did the resources we were using. This opened more doors and allowed us to burn through more resources for more time. We are now predicted to run out of oil in about 40 years, maybe sooner.

Jevons paradox played a role in the increased consumption of oil. Check it out.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

[Someone here]

9 hours ago, trenton said:

@Someone here good questions. There are a lot of factors that contribute to this. 

First of all, the global population is much higher and we are using our resources faster. Secondly, as societies evolved we became more dependent on various energy sources. Thirdly, climate change induced droughts are causing wars and there are likely to be many more of these water wars in the future.

Humans used to rely on wood for energy much more often. It wasn't until much later that we started using oil. As technology evolved so too did the resources we were using. This opened more doors and allowed us to burn through more resources for more time. We are now predicted to run out of oil in about 40 years, maybe sooner.

Jevons paradox played a role in the increased consumption of oil. Check it out.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

Thanks. That was insightful. 

It seems like the supply on earth is very limited and I'm surprised we haven't run out of things with the way our current population consume things. How do we do supply ourselves so well without draining the planet dry.

I guess with minerals and oil we could always recycle these things. But how do we recycle food and water which are the most important resource? 

[Nilsi]

We could:

1. find more non-organic sources of energy - if consciousness can create this planet, thought, emotions etc. it should be able to harvest something crude like energy from it somehow; that's the "where there's a will, there is a way" mystical side of things.
2. create a closed-loop materials economy, by which the output/waste of the economy is simultaneously the input/energy; books have been written on this and futurists like Hagens and Schmachtenberger base their civilizational design on this premise.

Edited March 1, 2023 by Nilsi

[Leo Gura]

Realistically no, because as humans unlock unlimited sources of energy from the sun and from fusion, all the other resources can be converted, recycled, and extracted from deeper in the Earth.

It depends on your time horizon. In the short and medium term there will be shortages, but in the long term unlimited cheap energy will allow for nearly unlimited resources.

Edited March 1, 2023 by Leo Gura

[Girzo]

9 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

all the other resources can be converted, recycled, and extracted from deeper in the Earth.

Also from the rocks orbiting the planet. They are rich in resources.

There can be a lot of turmoil during our life times and shortages of certain materials and energy.

On 28.02.2023 at 10:07 PM, Someone here said:

We only take up a fraction of its surface area.

We use most of the useful area. The rest is not so useful like, empty in a way.