Sustainability
Sustainability
In the world in which we currently find ourselves, we are being called out to change our current course. Unless we change our destructive ways, it is possible that the planet will not be able to sustain life as we know it during the course of the next hundred years. Not only is the planet warming, but many of the key resources we have become dependent upon are only available in lower and lower grades. What do we mean by this? Historically, the extraction of all resources follows a familiar pattern. At first we use the easiest to find resources, the low hanging fruit. With most minerals these are the resources that lie on the surface or just below it. We also extract the highest grades first, because they yield the highest returns for the least amount of energy and at the lowest cost. Once all high grade resources have been extracted we dig a bit deeper and refine slightly lower grades, expending more energy. We are now at a point where most of the high grades of many of the key resources we require have been depleted and we are extracting very low grades at vast expense and utilizing ever greater amounts of energy. This is happening just at the time that our key energy resources are reaching the peaks in their production. Oil, is by all independent accounts, near to if not past the point of its peak in production. Coal will reach that point within the coming two decades and gas is close to its peak too.
