Finite Global Resources

Finite Global Resources PDF Author: Gerhard Both
Publisher: Janus Publishing Company Lim
ISBN: 1857566211
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
A sobering glimpse at today’s world, this study examines the current status of nonrenewable global resources and how soon they are expected to run out. Offering hope, this book reveals the steps that society must be prepared to take to best protect what is left for future generations. Suggestions include not only energy conservation and recycling but also more radical and fundamental measures, such as downgrading the levels of technology employed and finding suitable substitutes for unsustainable materials.

Finite Global Resources

Finite Global Resources PDF Author: Gerhard Both
Publisher: Janus Publishing Company Lim
ISBN: 1857566211
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
A sobering glimpse at today’s world, this study examines the current status of nonrenewable global resources and how soon they are expected to run out. Offering hope, this book reveals the steps that society must be prepared to take to best protect what is left for future generations. Suggestions include not only energy conservation and recycling but also more radical and fundamental measures, such as downgrading the levels of technology employed and finding suitable substitutes for unsustainable materials.

Enough Is Enough

Enough Is Enough PDF Author: Rob Dietz
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0415820936
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
This powerful book sets out arguments and an agenda of policy proposals for achieving a sustainable and prosperous, but non-growing economy, also known as a steady-state economy. The authors describe a plan for solving the major social and environmental problems which face us today on a finite planet with a rapidly growing population.

Sustainable Tourism on a Finite Planet

Sustainable Tourism on a Finite Planet PDF Author: Megan Epler Wood
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1315439794
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
Sustainable Tourism on a Finite Planet" challenges readers to consider the new skills, tools and investments required to protect irreplaceable global resources from the impacts of escalating tourism demand in the next 50 years. This volume documents how technology is driving a travel revolution and propelling the growing global middle class to take leisure trips at unprecedented rates. Travel and tourism supply chains and business models for hotels, tour operators, cruise lines, airlines and airports are described with key environmental management techniques for each sector. This book recommends that decision makers assess the current and future value of natural, social and cultural capital to guide investment in destinations and protect vital resources. Case studies illustrate why budgets to protect local destinations are consistently underestimated and offer guidance on new metrics. Innovative approaches are proposed to support the transition to green infrastructure, protect incomparable landscapes, and engage local people in the monitoring of vital indicators to protect local resources.

Pathways to Urban Sustainability

Pathways to Urban Sustainability PDF Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 030944456X
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
Cities have experienced an unprecedented rate of growth in the last decade. More than half the world's population lives in urban areas, with the U.S. percentage at 80 percent. Cities have captured more than 80 percent of the globe's economic activity and offered social mobility and economic prosperity to millions by clustering creative, innovative, and educated individuals and organizations. Clustering populations, however, can compound both positive and negative conditions, with many modern urban areas experiencing growing inequality, debility, and environmental degradation. The spread and continued growth of urban areas presents a number of concerns for a sustainable future, particularly if cities cannot adequately address the rise of poverty, hunger, resource consumption, and biodiversity loss in their borders. Intended as a comparative illustration of the types of urban sustainability pathways and subsequent lessons learned existing in urban areas, this study examines specific examples that cut across geographies and scales and that feature a range of urban sustainability challenges and opportunities for collaborative learning across metropolitan regions. It focuses on nine cities across the United States and Canada (Los Angeles, CA, New York City, NY, Philadelphia, PA, Pittsburgh, PA, Grand Rapids, MI, Flint, MI, Cedar Rapids, IA, Chattanooga, TN, and Vancouver, Canada), chosen to represent a variety of metropolitan regions, with consideration given to city size, proximity to coastal and other waterways, susceptibility to hazards, primary industry, and several other factors.

Decoupling Natural Resource Use and Environmental Impacts from Economic Growth

Decoupling Natural Resource Use and Environmental Impacts from Economic Growth PDF Author: United Nations Environment Programme. International Resource Panel
Publisher: UNEP/Earthprint
ISBN: 9789280731675
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 60

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Book Description
By 2050, humanity could devour an estimated 140 billion tons of minerals, ores, fossil fuels and biomass per year three times its current appetite unless the economic growth rate is decoupled from the rate of natural resource consumption. Developed countries citizens consume an average of 16 tons of those four key resources per capita (ranging up to 40 or more tons per person in some developed countries). By comparison, the average person in India today consumes four tons per year. With the growth of both population and prosperity, especially in developing countries, the prospect of much higher resource consumption levels is far beyond what is likely sustainable if realised at all given finite world resources, warns this report by UNEP's International Resource Panel. Already the world is running out of cheap and high quality sources of some essential materials such as oil, copper and gold, the supplies of which, in turn, require ever-rising volumes of fossil fuels and freshwater to produce. Improving the rate of resource productivity (doing more with less) faster than the economic growth rate is the notion behind decoupling, the panel says. That goal, however, demands an urgent rethink of the links between resource use and economic prosperity, buttressed by a massive investment in technological, financial and social innovation, to at least freeze per capita consumption in wealthy countries and help developing nations follow a more sustainable path.

The Infinite Resource

The Infinite Resource PDF Author: Ramez Naam
Publisher: UPNE
ISBN: 1611683769
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 362

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Book Description
A surprising, convincing, and optimistic argument for meeting the crisis of scarcity with the power of ideas

The Limits to Growth

The Limits to Growth PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 207

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Book Description


Global Material Resources Outlook to 2060 Economic Drivers and Environmental Consequences

Global Material Resources Outlook to 2060 Economic Drivers and Environmental Consequences PDF Author: OECD
Publisher: OECD Publishing
ISBN: 9264307451
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
This report presents global projections of materials use and their environmental consequences, providing a quantitative outlook to 2060 at the global, sectoral and regional levels for 61 different materials (biomass resources, fossil fuels, metals and non-metallic minerals). It explains the ...

The World’s Future Crisis: Extractive Resources Depletion

The World’s Future Crisis: Extractive Resources Depletion PDF Author: Shahla Seifi
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 981336498X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 205

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Book Description
This book focuses mainly on strategic decision making at a global level, which is rarely considered in approaches to sustainability. This book makes a unique contribution as the work looks at global consequences of mineral exhaustion and steps that can be taken to alleviate the impending problems. This book highlights how sustainability has become one of the most important issues for businesses, governments and society at large. This book explores the topic of sustainability as one that is under much debate as to what it actually is and how it can be achieved, but it is completely evident that the resources of the planet are fixed in quantity, and once used, cannot be reused except through being reused in one form or another. This is particularly true of the mineral resources of the planet. These are finite in quantity, and once fully extracted, extra quantities are no longer available for future use. This book argues and presents evidence that the remaining mineral resources are diminishing significantly and heading towards exhaustion. Once mined and consumed, they are no longer available for future use other than what can be recycled and reused. This book demonstrates that future scarcity means that best use must be made of what exists, as sustainability depends upon this, and best use is defined as utility rather than economic value, which must be considered at a global level rather than a national level. Moreover, sustainability depends upon both availability in the present and in the future, so the use of resources requires attention to the future as well as to the present. This book investigates the alternative methods of achieving the global distribution of these mineral resources and proposes an optimum solution. This book adds to the discourse through the understanding of the importance of the depletion and finiteness of raw materials and their use for the present and the future, in order to achieve and maintain sustainability.

Sustainable Resource Use and Economic Dynamics

Sustainable Resource Use and Economic Dynamics PDF Author: Lucas Bretschger
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1402062931
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 235

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Book Description
The chapters in the book cover a broad range of aspects regarding the relationship between natural resource use and long-term economic development. The book surveys existing literature as well as adds to frontier research. In particular, the following topics are studied: incentives for adoption and diffusion of clean technology, resource scarcity and limits to growth, international convergence of energy intensity, and the social norms shaping resource depletion.