We use the resources provided by the Earth and its environments to underpin our economy. There are clear signs that we are using many of these resources unsustainably.

These signs include the reducing stocks of wild-caught food such as sea food; the increasing difficulty that we face to get oil and the diminishing energy returns and increasing pollution of the process of getting it; the depletion of aquifers that we use as a water supply; and the increasing loss of wilderness as space is taken up to grow food and biofuel crops, and to provide an ever-increasing living space for the Earth's growing human population.

The Global Footprint Network is a group of scientists who measure the ecological services provided by the Earth, and translate them into the area of the Earth's surface that is needed to provide those services. They then compare that area with how much suitable land that there is available to provide those services. They have determined that we are currently using the resources of the Earth at one-and-a-half times the sustainable rate.

It may seem to be nonsensical to say that we are using resources of the Earth at one-and-a-half times the sustainable rate. Surely, if we are continually able to obtain those resources then we must be using them sustainably; if not, how are we able to keep getting them?

This page is linked from:

limits to the use of resources

resource depletion

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