Resource Depletion

Abstract

So far it has been assumed that, through capital accumulation and technical progress, growth can continue indefinitely, though maybe at the expense of environmental amenity. Growth today provides, as it were, a spring-board for growth tomorrow. But G.N.P. is produced not only with man-made capital which can be augmented, but with natural resources, which cannot.¹ Indeed, present levels of production are using up natural resources at a rate which alarms resource pessimists; fossil fuels are burnt and lands overworked, leaving our descendants with smaller fuel stocks and degraded land. ‘Present reserves of all but a few metals will be exhausted within fifty years if consumption rates continue to grow as they are’ and more generally ‘if current trends are allowed to persist … the breakdown of society and the irreversible disruption of the life support systems on this planet are inevitable’ [46].