Consumption, resources, and the environment: What you need to know.

This blog Is for the general public.

         Before I started my Biorenewable course, I knew little to nothing about the different types of resources, our consumption of those resources, and the impact of the extraction and consumption of those resources. There are two main types of resources. One type is non-renewable resources which regenerate slow or don’t regenerate at all. An example of this is metallic minerals like copper or iron. The other main type is renewable resources which are resources that can regenerate quickly and could be used efficiently to not run out in the future. For example, solar energy. There is also a subset of renewable resources called Biorenewable resources, which are resources that comes from living things. An example of this is wool. All these resources are used daily by us but that raises a question, will we run out? This question has been asked for a long time. In 1980, we predicted that we will only have 27 years left of oil. Right now it’s 2019 and oil doesn’t seem to have run out yet, why is that? Over time, our technology and changing economics help us gain more access to the oil that is deeper in the ground and in 2010, we predicted we have 40 more years left, as mentioned in the book “The Irresponsible pursuit of Paradise”. So now we know the different types of resources and how they are used but how about the impact of the extraction and use of those resources? Before you use a product, the resources to make that product need to be extracted, processed, manufactured into the product, and then the product needs to be distributed. Then after use, it’s either fixed, disposed, or recycled. In each of these stages, there is an environmental impact. These impacts may include disruption of land by the means of mining or tilling fields, water quality impacts, and air quality impacts. Let’s take a deeper look at the impact of air quality. In pretty much all of these process stated above, carbon dioxide is released. Carbon dioxide is natural and is part of the carbon cycle, but through these processes, we contribute more than the natural amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The concentration of carbon dioxide has risen around 30% over the past 100 years and this could change the climate. This statistic was from the ‘A year in the Life of Earth’s CO2’ Video. This carbon travels to the atmosphere along with other greenhouse gases. All these greenhouse gases create a blanket in the atmosphere and the more amount of greenhouse gases released like carbon, the thicker the blanket. This means more heat is trapped in our atmosphere and the earth heats up causing global warming. Global warming could have many different negative impacts. Some impacts are a rise in sea level, stronger hurricanes, and the arctic ocean is expected to be ice-free by 2050, which was from the Nasa Climate Change Page. So how can we avoid global warming? We could do things like walk or take public transportation to work, eat less meat, and turn off electronics when not in use. Companies have also been using an assessment called the Life-Cycle Assessment or LCA that help them see the impact on the environment when making their product. With this information, they could take a different approach to make their product so it could suit the environment better. To conclude, our environment is changing rapidly and we should do all we can to try to protect it for our future generations through various things like educating others about the impacts of the large dispersion of carbon and doing better ourselves.