Environmental Science in Era of Scarce Resources

Abstract

Today s global economy is based on cheap, readily available energy and resources. However, conventional oil production peaked between 2005 and 2006 and within the next 10 to 20 years coal production will peak and decline. The timing of all of the resource peaks is no coincidence. They are all causally related by the past 20 years that cheap, abundant energy from fossil fuels has driven to new technological invention, thus increasing the total and per capita resource extraction and consumption and population growth. It is true that fossil fuels are running out, but the carbon dioxide resulting from the burning will remain in the atmosphere for hundreds of years and the effects of the emissions would last for hundreds more.