renewable and nonrenewable resource

• resource 


  anything obtained from the environment to meet our needs and wants
• -Some resources such as solar energy, fresh air, fertile soil and wild edible plants are directly available for use -Other resources such as petroleum, iron, underground water and cultivate crops are not directly available -They become useful only with some effort and technological ingenuity. -For example, petroleum was a mysterious fluid until we learned how to find, extract and convert it into gasoline, heating oil and other products that could be sold
• solar energy

  renewed continuously and is expected to last at least 6 billion as the sun completes its life cycle
• renewable resources 


  Can be replenished in days to several hundred years through natural resources as long as it is not used up faster than it is renewed. Examples: forests, grasslands, fish populations, freshwater, fresh air and fertile soil
• The highest rate at which a renewable resource can be used indefinitely without reducing its available supply is called its Sustainable yield
• 1. What will happen when the use of a renewable resource exceeds its natural replacement rate? 


  The available supply begins to shrink, a process known as Environmental degradation
• Such degradation of the natural capital provided by renewable resources is an example of unsustainable living
• Some renewable resources can be used by almost any one Examples are fresh air, underground water supplies, the earth’s climate and the open ocean and its fish
• We are environmentally degrading many openly shared renewable resources. In 1968 biologist, Garrett Hardin (1915-2003) called such degradation the “tragedy of the common” It occurs because each user of a shared common resource or open-access resource reasons. “If I do not use this resource, someone else will. The little bit that I use or pollute is not enough to matter, and anyway, it’s a renewable resource.”
• Two Major Ways to Deal with the Problem

  1. Use shared renewable resources at rates well below their estimated sustainable yields by reducing use of the resources, regulating access to the resources or doing both
• Two Major Ways to Deal with the Problem

  2. Convert open-access renewable resources to private ownership. -The reason is that if you own something, you are more likely to protect your investment. -That sounds good, but this approach is not practical for global open-access resources such as the atmosphere and the open ocean, which cannot be divided up and solid as private property
• According to a massive and growing body of scientific evidence, we are living unsustainably by wasting, depleting, and degrading the earth’s natural capital at an accelerating rate (Core Case study)
• -In many parts of the world, potentially renewable forests are shrinking, deserts are expanding, soils are eroding and agricultural lands are being replaced by suburban developments -In addition, the lower atmosphere is warming, glaciers are melting, sea levels are rising, and floods, droughts and forest fires are increasing.
• nonrenewable resource 


  -exist in a fixed quantity, or stock, in the earth’s crust
• on the time scale of millions to billions of years, geological processes can renew such resources, but on the much shorter human time scale, these resources can be depleted much faster than they are formed -
• -such exhaustible resources include energy resources, such as coal and oil, metallic mineral resources such as copper and aluminum and nonmetallic mineral resources such as salt and sand
• As nonrenewable resources are depleted, human ingenuity can often find substitutes For example, during this century, a mix of renewable energy resources such as wind, the sun, flowing water and the heat in the earth’s interior could reduce our dependence on nonrenewable fossil fuels such as oil and coal.
• other various types of plastics and other synthetic materials can replace certain nonrenewable metals Some renewable resources such as copper and aluminum can be recycles or reused to extend supplies
• Recycling nonrenewable metallic resources takes much less energy, water and other resources and produces much less pollution and environmental degradation than exploring virgin metallic resources
• Reusing such resources takes even less energy and other resources and produces less pollution and environmental degradation than recycling
• From an environmental and sustainability viewpoint, the priorities in the use of nonrenewable resources such as metals and plastics more sustainably should be: Reduce (use less) Reuse and Recycle