UNEP: Humanity Hitting the Resource Ceiling

[GliderGuider]

Humanity Hitting the Resource Ceiling

Higher resource consumption levels will be prohibitively costly or simply impossible, warns the report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

During the 20th century, the rate of resource use has increased twice as fast as the increase in global population. Now, resources are being consumed at an even greater rate and are on pace to triple by 2050, the report calculates. Except there simply aren't enough resources left on the planet to manage that.

The average person in Canada or the United States currently consumes 25 tonnes of key resources every year, while a person living in India and in most African countries uses just four tonnes, the report found.

North America's infrastructure, including transportation, sanitation, food production and so on, are all high-energy, high-material-use systems, said report co-author Fischer-Kowalski. They were designed with the assumption of never-ending access to cheap and plentiful energy and resources. Efficiency improvements can be made but it is more expensive and limits to what can be done. "Our report calls for an urgent rethink of the links between resource use and economic prosperity," Fischer-Kowalski told IPS.

[txlibdem]

1. Interesting post. There are two possible outcomes.

1) We all continue on in the same foolish, simple-minded pursuit of material wealth, with catastrophic results, probable extinction. Or,

2) We work together, renounce Capitalism and end the inequities that Capitalism requires in order to exist.

PS, there is no scarcity of resources, only the manufactured fantasy of it.