Finite resources

When will we run out of natural resources, either from depletion of non-renewables or overuse of renewables? Scientific American has a great interactive graph charting How Much Is Left that would tie in really well to our cycle on natural resources.

How Much Is Left? interactive graph. from Scientific American

The caveat is that it is notoriously difficult to really figure out how much of a resource is left. For one thing, there might be undiscovered deposits, or we could find ways of using it more efficiently to extend its lifetime. As resources get more scarce their price goes up which gets people more interested in discovering more or coming up with better, more efficient, methods of extracting things like minerals from alternative sources. If we start to run out of Lithium for batteries maybe someone will develop a process to extract it from seawater. Or, as oil gets harder to extract and its price goes up, perhaps there will be more investment in alternative energy technologies like wind farms, tidal generators and solar convection towers.

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