Natural Resource Depletion: How Overpopulation and Overconsumption Threaten Global Resources
Posted by madrid987@reddit | collapse | View on Reddit | 7 comments
Humanity is consuming natural resources at a rate approximately twice as fast as the Earth's regeneration rate every year.
This gap between supply and demand is called resource depletion, and its pace is accelerating.
So, what is the real cause of resource depletion? Is it due to overpopulation, or is it due to excessive consumption? As we will examine further, the answer is both, but their proportions are not equal.
DeltaForceFish@reddit
I would argue military is way more responsible than over population. Not only do they consume massive quantities; we are talking hundreds of pounds of silver for advanced missiles. They then just go boom and its gone forever. Along with whatever they destroyed and the resources needed for that building or machine. We would be better off as a species completely demilitarizing and take our chances that no aliens show up like they did in the simpsons.
Shoddy-Childhood-511@reddit
It's morally the opposite: sustainability requires some conflict and even bloodshed.
An electrical circuit must "waste" some energy in a resistor to slow down the current flow, and not just exhaust the battery almost instantly.
In nature, ecosystems achieve rough sustainability all the time, but through predation and parasitism, aka "wasteful" violence that stops excessive growth & consumption.
As I understand it, the maximum power principle describes how lifeforms would exhaust all available resources, but also works cleanly in models that show how predation and parasitism help achieve sustainability.
Jevons paradox describes one aspect of how this happens in human societies, but human societies should be subject to the maximum power principle too of course. We've never had a voluntary energy transition, just added more and more and more
We humans have disrupted everything through unparalleled global economic collaboration through trade, which enables current humans to consume more, but at the expense of all other life and future humans. We'll need conflicts that break most international collaboration & trade.
Importantly, inequality should decline if and only if either the workforce shrinks, or lots of capital gets destoryed, so the nice way would be conflicts wrecking capital like refineries.
chota-kaka@reddit
If people, civilizations never reduce their consumption, then nature has her way of forcing reduced consumption through population decline.
Remember humans may be the apex predator and think of themselves as above everything around them, they are still a product of nature and in every way still a part of nature.
StatementBot@reddit
The following submission statement was provided by /u/madrid987:
ss: Resource depletion refers to the phenomenon where raw materials are exhausted in a specific region or globally. This applies to both renewable resources (forests, freshwater, fish, etc.) and non-renewable resources (fossil fuels, minerals, etc.), and occurs when the rate of consumption exceeds the rate of regeneration.
According to the 2024 report by the International Resource Panel (IRP), an agency under UNEP, global natural resource extraction has tripled over the past 50 years, rising from 30 billion tons in 1970 to 106 billion tons today. This represents a massive increase and has resulted in serious environmental consequences.
It is a well-known fact that overpopulation is a major cause of resource depletion. It is self-evident that demand for food, water, energy, and resources increases in a densely populated environment.
Overpopulation occurs when the population of a region exceeds the level that the region's resources can sustainably support.
The problem here is that even small resource demands are amplified by the large population, placing a burden on local ecosystems, particularly on land and freshwater. Populations of overconsumption occur in developed countries with very high per capita resource usage, and in such nations, even a relatively small population size leads to severe environmental destruction.
The problem is, isn't the desire of people in poor countries or the poor themselves to become wealthier and consume much more greater than the desire to reduce consumption in developed countries? I believe this is the paradox that makes it difficult to solve the problem of overconsumption.
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1tq2wze/natural_resource_depletion_how_overpopulation_and/ood6fvd/
NyriasNeo@reddit
"challenges to sustainable development"
It is naive to assume the same life is sustainable. Life is never sustainable. When it becomes too successful, it change the environment around too much, die off, evolution kicks in and give rise to new life. The cycle never ends. Case in point, early life on earth excrete oxygen, which is toxic to them, kill all of them, and gave rise to us.
I bet in another 10M years, life on the planet would need micro-plastic as a resource. The "fossil" resource of their time. They will deplete it, probably flood the planet with something else, and then a new cycle begins.
madrid987@reddit (OP)
ss: Resource depletion refers to the phenomenon where raw materials are exhausted in a specific region or globally. This applies to both renewable resources (forests, freshwater, fish, etc.) and non-renewable resources (fossil fuels, minerals, etc.), and occurs when the rate of consumption exceeds the rate of regeneration.
According to the 2024 report by the International Resource Panel (IRP), an agency under UNEP, global natural resource extraction has tripled over the past 50 years, rising from 30 billion tons in 1970 to 106 billion tons today. This represents a massive increase and has resulted in serious environmental consequences.
It is a well-known fact that overpopulation is a major cause of resource depletion. It is self-evident that demand for food, water, energy, and resources increases in a densely populated environment.
Overpopulation occurs when the population of a region exceeds the level that the region's resources can sustainably support.
The problem here is that even small resource demands are amplified by the large population, placing a burden on local ecosystems, particularly on land and freshwater. Populations of overconsumption occur in developed countries with very high per capita resource usage, and in such nations, even a relatively small population size leads to severe environmental destruction.
The problem is, isn't the desire of people in poor countries or the poor themselves to become wealthier and consume much more greater than the desire to reduce consumption in developed countries? I believe this is the paradox that makes it difficult to solve the problem of overconsumption.
DoubtSubstantial5440@reddit
Oh well sounds like a problem for the young to deal with someday /s