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Principle of the Commons
Without property rights, resources become degraded With a common resource, everyone uses it, no one conserves it
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Absolute Resource Scarcity
- resources that will go away, we do not have enough of these resources for now and future use at the rate they are being used.
- Examples: oil, coal, old growth forest
Note: an old growth forest is one that has never been cut, trees often a 1000 yrs old, there are very few left in the world
Efficiency, recycling, finding alternatives must be done to manage these resources
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Relative Resource Scarcity
when the resource is not located where it is needed, Efficiency, recycling, urban planning must be done to manage these resources
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Discuss Quality
- Is the resource in a form we can use it or has it been degraded?
- Example: water agricultural runoff, mining runoff, urban areas thermal pollution from cooling towers of power plants
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Discuss Productivity
- the rate of use is not equal to the ability to replenish the resource
- Discussion: Aquifers – these are replenished by rainfall, when a large number of well pipes are drilled the water in the aquifer is rapidly lowered – then, pumps are used to gain access to the deeper water – then wells are dug deeper – water can not be replenished – an example of Tragedy of the Commons
- Conservation and land use planning must be used to insure productivity
- To maintain a resource: We must not use more than can be replenished in a given time frame.
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Discuss Human Population Growth
- Human population growth = increasing rate of resource exploitation
- Increasing exploitation = resource related problem
The most important factor in human population growth is the RATE at which the human population is expanding
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World population growth is exponential, a plot of which is a _____
“The rate of growth is proportional to the state of growth.”
J-curve
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