Download Patterns of Resource Consumption

PATTERNS OF RESOURCE CONSUMPTION
TYPES OF RESOURCES
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Natural Resources : Anything in the biophysical environment
that can be used by people; i.e. a naturally occuring material
that a society perceives as being useful to its economic
and/or social well-being, and which can be used or exploited.
Renewable Resources: Are those materials that can be
regenerated in nature faster than they are being exploited by
a society. E.g.: Solar radiation, water, wind, soil, plants and
animals.
Non-renewable Resources: Is a material generated slowly in
nature that, for all practical purposes, it exists in a finite
quantity. Examples include all fossil fuels (coal, natural gas
and oil), minerals (metallic and non-metallic), and nuclear
fuels (like uranium, plutonium etc).
RECYCLING NON-RENEWABLE RESOURCES
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Many non-renewable resources can be
recycled, which means they can be used
repeatedly. Examples include most metals
(such as aluminum, lead and zinc); some nonmetallic minerals (like diamonds) and materials
manufactured from fossil fuels (such as
plastics).
OTHER WAYS OF CLASSIFYING RESOURCES
ENERGY RESOURCES (fossil fuels, geothermal
reserves, water [used for hydro-electricity],
radioactive material;
 ORGANIC RESOURCES (soils, forests, animals)
 WATER RESOURCES
 LANDSCAPE
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NEO-MALTHUSIANS VS. ANTI-MALTHUSIANS
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NEO-MALTHUSIANS:
- Non-renewable resources are finite and
therefore exhaustible (e.g. Paul Ehrlich);
- A combination of population growth and finite
natural resources will create mass misery (Club
of Rome)
ANTI-MALTHUSIANS:
- Price is what determines scarcity, not the
physical quantity of a resource (Julian Simon)
- If something is becoming scarcer, its price will
increase (Demand and Offer Law of Economics)
- Over time, the price of every natural resource
tends to decrease; thus, they become more
abundant (less scarce).
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ANTI-MALTHUSIANS
A) Boserupians: It was first developed by Danish economist Ester Boserup
in 1965 as a counterpart to both the malthusian and neomalthusian
theories.
Boserup's idea was a challenge to the assumption dating back to
Malthus’s time (and still held in many quarters) that agricultural
methods determine population (via food supply). Instead, Boserup
argued that population determines agricultural methods. A major
point of her book is that "necessity is the mother of invention". It was
her great belief that humanity would always find a way and was quoted
in saying "The power of ingenuity would always outmatch that of
demand"; Although Boserup's original theory was highly simplified and
generalized, it proved instrumental in understanding agricultural
patterns in developing countries. By 1978, her theory of agricultural
change began to be reframed as a more generalized theory. The field
continued to mature in to relation to population and environmental
studies in developing countries
B) Reformists: Many scholars – economists and geographers and
demographers – from developing nations elaborated this theory based
on Boserup's studies. Like the boserupian theory, the Reformist theory
was a response to Neomalthusians. But the focus was not agricultural
production – as was Boserup's – but instead, economic development.
Reformists believe that countries aren't poor because they
are populous (like Malthus' original idea, and neomalthusians),
but, on the contrary, that countries are populous because they are
poor.
Once countries get richer, its population starts to shrink naturally.
It is the theory – along with Boserupian – that has proved to be
closer to reality.
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C) Limits-to-Growth/Club of Rome: “The Limits to
Growth” is a 1972 book about the computer
simulation of exponential economic and population
growth with finite resource supplies.Funded by
the Volkswagen Foundation and commissioned by
the Club of Rome it was first presented at theSt.
Gallen Symposium. Its authors were Donella H.
Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jørgen Randers,
and William W. Behrens III. The book used
the World3 model to simulate the consequence of
interactions between the Earth's and human
systems.
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Five variables were examined in the original model.
These variables are: world
population, industrialization, pollution, food
production, and resource depletion. The authors
intended to explore the possibility of a sustainable
feedback pattern that would be achieved by
altering growth trends among the five variables
under three scenarios. They noted that their
projections for the values of the variables in each
scenario were predictions "only in the most limited
sense of the word," and were only indications of the
system's behavioral tendencies.Two of the
scenarios saw "overshoot and collapse" of the
global system by the mid to latter part of the 21st
century, while a third scenario resulted in a
"stabilized world.“
D) Marxists: Karl Marx was contrary to Malthus's views on population growth.
According to Marx, population increase must be interpreted in the context of
the capitalistic economic system. A capitalist gives to labor as wage a small
share of labor's productivity, and the capitalist himself takes the lion's share.
The capitalist introduces more and more machinery and thus increases the
surplus value of labor's productivity, which is pocketed by the capitalist. The
surplus is the difference between labor's productivity and the wage level. A
worker is paid less than the value of his productivity. When machinery is
introduced, unemployment increases and, consequently, a reserve army of
labor is created. Under these situations, the wage level goes down further, the
poor parents cannot properly rear their children and a large part of the
population becomes virtually surplus. Poverty, hunger and other social ills are
the result of socially unjust practices associated with capitalism.
Thus, Population growth, according to Marx, is therefore not related to the
alleged ignorance or moral inferiority of the poor, but is a consequence of the
capitalist economic system.
MALTHUSIANS VS.
NEO MALTHUSIANS
SCHEME
EXTRA RESOURCES (OBS: 2 VIDEOS, 10 MIN
MAX.)
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http://youtu.be/cJJ91SwP8w?list=PLRH3bs28zHpGy1RsynHj_mo1hy57UA9h
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVlE6BM_lIU&li
=PLRH3bs28zHpGy1RsynHj_mo1hy57UA9h&index=1