In our society we take things like electricity, natural gas, wood, steel and lets not forget oil, for granted. If your cold you turn on the heater, if your hungry you cook something to eat, and if you want to build something you go to Lowe's or Home Depot and buy all the wood and nails you can carry. Where do all these resources come from and how much is left? Americans consume about thirty percent of the world's resources and with an overall population of nearly two hundred and eighty million people we Americans consume a lot of goods. We can break resources down into several groups:.
Natural Resources: Things like air, water, trees, coal, oil, land, sunshine. All our resources start as natural resources and are manufactured or used in someway to produce the end product we consume.
People: People are the key ingredient transforming our natural resources into consumable resources. People provide the labor such as; factory workers, executives, managers, accountants, educators, legislators and auto mechanics, basically anyone who is involved with this transformation of goods from natural to consumable.
Capital: Without capital such as factories, buildings, and machinery and of course money, we wouldn't have all the consumable resources we have today.
If you live in a country that is very limited in its natural resources you need to import them from another country that might be rich in that particular resource and depending on which resource it can get expensive. So how much longer does our society have until we use up all available natural resources? If we do what happens to mankind? Luckily one of our resources, people, will continue to search for alternative means of resources and someday we can stop consuming our natural resources. .
http://www.amosweb.com/cgi-bin/pdg_dsp.pl'term=Fact+1:+Our+Limited+Pie.
http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html.
http://www.cmsenergy.com/MediaCenter/NewPublications.
