• Question: What would happen if we run out of natural resources?

    Asked by gregsfirstbabes to Josh on 17 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Josh Makepeace

      Josh Makepeace answered on 17 Jun 2013:

      I think that the simplest answer is that we wouldn’t last very long at all!! We rely on natural resources for our food, drink, and pretty much everything else we use in our lives. Without those resources, our planet would probably be a lot more like Mars.

      It’s an important point that your question brings up, that we need to look after our natural resources not just because of the fact they’re pretty, or that other animals use them, but that we also rely on them to survive!

Comments

  • Photo: lidiadawolf

    lidiadawolf commented on :

    we never run out of natural resources!

  • Photo: 07stoombs

    07stoombs commented on :

    are there any resources on other planets that we can use?

  • Photo: Josh

    Josh commented on :

    You have a point, lidiadwolf, that some resources don’t disappear – however, they can end up in a form that is no longer useful to us. For example, we can pollute soil or water to the extent where we really can’t use it any more. Other resources, like fossil fuels, and animals, can definitely disappear! So we need to be careful about how we manage them.

    07stoombs, that’s a really interesting idea, and certainly one people have been thinking about. The biggest problem at the moment is that it would be so expensive to try and collect resources, that it’s just not really possible at the moment.

    One thing people have started to seriously consider is mining resources from asteroids and comets that pass near the Earth. They generally have valuable metals in them like nickel, iron and platinum. So we might see that happening in the not too distant future. There’s a website for a company planning to do just that, if you’re interested

    http://www.planetaryresources.com/