The Student Room Group

What happens when earth runs out of resources?

Just wondering, our economy is founded based on resources we dig out from earth, be it oil, iron ores, rare earth metal etc ... What if one day we finally exhausted all of earth's commodities? Will human civilization finally come to a halt? :afraid:
Reply 1
Original post by HucktheForde
Just wondering, our economy is founded based on resources we dig out from earth, be it oil, iron ores, rare earth metal etc ... What if one day we finally exhausted all of earth's commodities? Will human civilization finally come to a halt? :afraid:


Looks that way, but this will happen in a very very very long time (I think)
I guess we'll just have to find new ways of doing things
Reply 3
Original post by HucktheForde
Just wondering, our economy is founded based on resources we dig out from earth, be it oil, iron ores, rare earth metal etc ... What if one day we finally exhausted all of earth's commodities? Will human civilization finally come to a halt? :afraid:


Simple. We die.

Of course, if your talking about all of the earths resources
Our economy may be founded on finite resources but it has evolved to run on unlimited lines of credit.
Nothing serious we'll probably just die.
the human race is making a pretty good job of :dolphin::dolphin::dolphin::dolphin:ing up this beautiful planet... it is time we left it to the less retarded species such as ants.
Reply 7
Original post by DanteTheDoorKnob
Nothing serious we'll probably just die.


I don't have to worry because it's not the time yet.

Spoiler



Posted from TSR Mobile
Original post by Impressive
I don't have to worry because it's not the time yet.

Spoiler


Posted from TSR Mobile


Just fatten up your children for when the time comes.
Assuming we haven't found a way of extracting resources from other planets, I expect we'd be reduced to a simpler society. Not necessarily primitive as we can recycle a lot of materials, but less extravagant than what we have now.
Original post by the bear
the human race is making a pretty good job of :dolphin::dolphin::dolphin::dolphin:ing up this beautiful planet... it is time we left it to the less retarded species such as ants.


This planet would be ugly without our beautiful castles and arts, it should go destroy itself.
Original post by DanteTheDoorKnob
This planet would be ugly without our beautiful castles and arts, it should go destroy itself.


the evolutionary experiment on hairless monkeys will shortly be closing. please finalise your delusions. thank you for messing with Gaia. we hope not to see you again.
By that point we'll all be living in some Virtual Reality earth with headsets on all day and probably some pipes so we don't have to move for the toilet
Original post by DanteTheDoorKnob
Just fatten up your children for when the time comes.


I will.
Maybe we would have colonised other planets by that point
Metal resources we can recycle. Energy resources can be replaced by renewable alternatives.

Also some people are thinking of metal mining from asteroids.
Original post by HucktheForde
Just wondering, our economy is founded based on resources we dig out from earth, be it oil, iron ores, rare earth metal etc ... What if one day we finally exhausted all of earth's commodities? Will human civilization finally come to a halt? :afraid:

I doubt it. The resource problem is less significant and easier to solve than many catastrophists claim, see this article for an example: http://www.naturalnews.com/028028_rare_earth_elements_mining.html.
It wont
Reply 18
Original post by HucktheForde
Just wondering, our economy is founded based on resources we dig out from earth, be it oil, iron ores, rare earth metal etc ... What if one day we finally exhausted all of earth's commodities? Will human civilization finally come to a halt? :afraid:


We will return to the Bronze Age and start all over again.
We'll not really run out of most resources since...

Fossil fuel wise we'll move to renewable, when push comes to shove it'll be amazing just how quickly former petroleum companies come out with much more highly efficient green energy sources, almost like they were sitting on them. Solar is already cheaper than coal for many countries and has a lot of improvements to generate more power per sq metre in the pipeline. Then of course there's nuclear

Metals and plastics we can recycle for the most part, again when it comes to it we'll obviously put much more effort into recycling thoroughly.

Main thing would be other uses for petroleum products, but we'd find alternatives. Some bacteria can be made to produce them for instance.

Quick Reply

Latest