Resource Issues

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Resource Issues

• Lecture 2a

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Issues and Thoughts

• Rapidly industrializing world is consuming
  resources at unprecedented rate
• Nonrenewable resources are being rapidly depleted
  or rich veins are depleted
• Renewable resources are being depleted faster
  than the generation rate.
• Question How do we conserve nonrenewable
  resources and regenerate renewables while
  protecting biodiversity?

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Key Resources

• Air degradation by human activities
• Water Surface, groundwater, aquifers, fossil
  water
• Agricultural Soil regeneration rate (best case)
  is 10 tons/hectare (1 mm deep soil over a
  hectare)
• Nonrenewable resources (the worlds geologic
  endowment) fossil fuels, ores
• Renewable resources (solar driven) forests,
  biomass, soil, fisheries
• Intangible resources (no upper limit) open
  space, beauty, serenity, genius, information,
  diversity, satisfaction

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Resource Consumption Scenarios
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Resource Consumption Patterns
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Peak Oil Update (Scientific American, August
2010)
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Hubberts Pimple - Oil Consumption
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Coal Production
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Uranium Production, France
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Reasonably assured (RAR), inferred (IR) and
already produced uranium resources
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Availability of Common Metals
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Carrying Capacity

• ...the maximum population that can be sustained
  in a habitat without the degradation of the
  life-support system.
• sustained, instantaneous, maximum, optimum,
  human, physical, hydrologic, global, biophysical,
  real, and natural carrying capacity
• carrying capacity per resource, KL
• contexts biology, ecology, business management,
  anthropology, forestry, hydrology, and others
• Knowing the carrying capacity of an ecosystem is
  an important planning tool because it provides
  information on when the services of the ecosystem
  are being exceeded, leading to its possible
  collapse and the total or partial loss of the
  services of the system

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Carrying Capacity Constraints

• Human carrying capacity depends on both natural
  constraints and cultural choices
• Natural constraints include the distribution and
  availability of potable water, the quality of
  soil, ecosystem biodiversity, weather, terrain,
  and the occurrence of natural disasters
• Cultural constraints economic system, political
  institutions, values, tastes, fashions, religion,
  family structure, educational concepts, and the
  handling of externalities

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Human Carrying Capacity

• UN forecast of between 7.7 and 12 billion people
  in the year 2050
• In 1995 the worlds population was 5.7 billion
  with an annual growth rate of 1.6, creating a
  doubling time of 43 years
• Wide variety of estimates as to how many people
  the world can support

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Ecological Footprint

• Ecological Footprint (EF) is the quantity of land
  needed to support a person, population, activity,
  or and economy
• EF uses five major categories of consumption to
  compute the corresponding land area food,
  housing, transportation, consumer goods, and
  services
• Londons impacts on ecosystems when analysis
  indicates that its EF is 120 times its physical
  footprint
• The Dutch have an EF 15 times greater than its
  actual land area
• The available land per person to produce the
  required goods and services and assimilate their
  waste is about 1.5 hectares. Americans are using
  3x their Earth Share.

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Ecological Footprint of a Canadian
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Consumption Worldwide
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Ecological Footprint

• Ecological Footprint (EF) is the quantity of land
  needed to support a person, population, activity,
  or and economy.
• Londons impacts on ecosystems when analysis
  indicates that its EF is 120 times its physical
  footprint
• The Dutch have an EF 15 times greater than their
  actual land area
• The available land per person to produce the
  required goods and services and assimilate their
  waste is about 1.5 hectares. Americans are using
  3x their Earth Share.

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Materials Efficiency

• MIPS Materials Intensity per Service Unit
  (Friedrich Schmidt-Bleek)
• Ecological Rucksack Micrograms v. Megatons
• 10 grams gold 350 tons of earth
• MIPS1350,000
• 1 CD 3,000 pages
• Data Transmission via fiberoptics

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Ecological Rucksack Diagram
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Some Remedies

• Precycling Design for the Environment (DFE)
• For the built environment
• Design for deconstruction
• Design products for disassembly
• Use recyclable materials
• Shift the economics in favor of cyclic systems
• Increase costs of disposal
• Increase taxes for pollution
• Increase penalties for damage to natural systems
• A question of national will and policy

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Resource Consumption
1. Live better 2. Pollute and deplete less 3.
Make money 4. Harness markets enlist
business 5. Multiply the use of scarce capital 6.
Increase security 7. Be equitable have more
employment
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Ford Synergy 2010
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Constraints and Prescriptions for Sustainable
Resource Use

• Constraint 1- Maintain Environmental Quality
• 1. Conserve resources and material cycles
• 2. Limit waste emission (Maintain unused
  assimilative capacity
• 3. Maintain landscape amenity

Young, 1992
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• Constraint 2 - Efficient resource use
• 4. Make users (consumers) pay
• 5. Make polluters pay
• 6. Compensate for the production of non-market
  benefits
• 7. Allocate and enforce use rights
• 8. Couple resource security with environmental
  security
• 9. Avoid selective price distortions
• 10. Do not mask ecological signals with
  subsidies
• 11. Pursue technical efficiency
• 12. Promote recycling and product durability

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• Constraint 3 - Avoid government failure
• 13. Use market mechanisms
• 14. Promote resource stewardship
• 15. Tax resource extraction and use
• 16. Package decisions to favor the poor
• 17. Maintain political and economic stability
• Constraint 4 - Maintain future options
• 18. Offset environmental degradation
• 19. When ecologically uncertain, use the
  precautionary principle
• 20. Increase ecological, social, and economic
  diversity
• 21. Maintain low, stable real interest rates

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• Constraint 5 - Stop population growth
• 22. Create self-reproducing populations
• 23. Make primary, and preferably secondary
  education compulsory
• Constraint 6 - Conserve natural capital
• 24. Replacement price costing
• 25. Invest to enhance natural resource
  productivity
• 26. Harvest at no more than the regeneration rate
• 27. Offset renewable resource depletion and
  degradation

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• Constraint 7 - Maintain the aggregate value of
  mineral stocks and renewable resources
• 28. Re-invest the rent
• 29. Complement renewable resource productivity
• Constraint 8 - Redistribute wealth
• 30. Promote freer trade
• 31. Set equivalent trading standards
• 32. Reduce the debt in per capita-poor countries
• 33. Facilitate wealth transfer to per capita-poor
  countries

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Concluding Thoughts

• Adequate resources are essential for
  sustainability
• Ecological systems must be protected and restored
  during/after resource extraction
• Beware of the Ecological Rucksack!
• Renewable resource extraction rate lt regeneration
  rate
• Dematerialization and deenergization are
  essential