Geography-Consuming resources

Malthus:

• As population grows, the fewer resources we will have.
• Thomas Malthus suggested that population would grow by doubling, 2, 4, 8 etc but food would only increase arithmatically, 2,3,4,5 etc.
• Due to this eventually a gap would appear between the two and food shortages would lead to a series of social and economic crises with an eventual collapse of population due to famine and other things.
• Evidence for this is famines and that just because we can feed almost 7 billion now it does not mean we could feed 9 or 10 billion in 2050. 

Boserup:

• Ester Boserup took a different view. They both agreed that population would increase but Boserup suggests that we never run out of resources as when we get to the point when resources are going short we are pressured to invent new ways of avoiding a crisis. 
• A growing population causes changes in technology that allow the population to grow again. 
• Therefore, she concluded that population growth is absolutely central to the development of the human species.
• One piece of evidence for this GM crops

Tata Nano and The Ford Edge

The Tata Nano and The Ford Edge are both cars, the Edge is a hydrogen powered car while the Nano is petrol powered, both have positives and negatives.

Tata Nano: Positives:

• It's a People's care and is affordable in India where most people do not earn large quantities of money. Therefore, it's cheap and good transport as it costs just £1,500
• Has a small 2 cylinder engine which produces 33BHP. Due to this it won't produce huge levels of emission such as carbon dioxide.

Tata Nano: Negatives:

• Brings ownership to the middle class and lower class meaning more people own vehicles so more emissions are released. Oil supply used up faster
• It's likely to be exported around the world where there will be demand for a cheap car so more kerosene is used in transportation and more pollutants are released into the atmosphere. 
• £1,500 means lots of Indians will own it increasing emissions. Due to this peak oil will be behind us soon

Ford Edge Positives:

• Hydrogen found in combination of other elements such as carbon or oxygen. Once separated it can be as powerful as oil but with no harmful emissions. Just water comes out of exhaust. hydrogen therefore reduces the need for oil but also emits no carbon dioxide so it's far better for the environment.
• Has a similar travel distance to a normal petrol or diesel car and can travel for 225 miles before it needs refuelling, however, some stations may be far away so could be bad in remote locations.
• California has developed the CaH2Net - the first hydrogen highway. hopes to have 50 hydrogen filling station as of 2010. Hoped that more Californians will own more hydrogen cars as the cost falls. California's dependence on oil will fall as well as harmful emissions from petrol if this happens.

Ford Edge Negatives:

• It's extremely expensive
• Fossil fuels are still needed to separate hydrogen and form the fuel cell. 

Metal crime:

Car owners are threatened by thieves, especially 4X4 owners, this is due to the fact that thieves can slip underneath the car and sell the catalytic converters due to the metals inside being precious. The prices of the metals inside have soared over the past two years due to their increasing rareity as they are non-renewable resources. 

The thieves who steal these converters then sell them on to metal traders for anything between £100 and £200. These are then exported or sold to people in India, China and Eastern Europe to be recycled and sold on. This is common in developing countries as people find it hard to make money so recyling them and then selling them allows for people and the government to make money from metals and obtain them due to their high prices. They are also much cheaper to obtain as metals are usually cheaper to recycle than extract. 

Oil and it's use in plastic bottles:

Peak oil: Some people think that the supply of oil will peak and then the reserves will start to shrink.

The countries which use the most oil currently are industrial/developed. This is due to the fact that most people can afford cars and other things which require lots of petrol.

However, in the future developing countries will be using the most oil. This is worrying as the world's oil consumption will increase meaning we will reach peak oil faster. 

Oil is also used to make plastic bottles and these are often used only once, therefore, loads of oil is being used to create polymers. There are also some heavily future implications:

• Only 5.5% of plastic bottles was recycled in 2003. This is bad for the environment and has reduced oil. It takes 450 years to break down. Space for land fill is also decreasing due to increasing population. Due to this dealing with waste will become more expensive.
• Plastic thrown in the oceans kills many sea creatures every year, decreasing supply of fish. 
• 0.25% of the world's oil consumption is used to create plastic bottles. As oil is finite peak oil will be reached

Resource: A naturally occurring substance which can be used in its own right, or made into something els

Physical resource: Natural materials found at or below the Earth's surface such as soil and rock. Many rocks are used as energy sources such as coal and can become essential for human activity and making products

Energy resource: Resources used for heat. Fossil fuels such as coal oil or natural gas can be burned either for heat or to create steam to drive generators to produce electricity

Mineral resource: Materials normally quarried or mined from the ground in raw form and then heated and purified to become materials that are used such as iron into steel with other elements to make this alloy which is used to manufacture cars

Biological resource: Resources with a biological origin that have developed through growth and development such as trees or other vegetation or resources grown for human use such as crops

Renewable resources: Resources that sustain themselves without human intervention and, as such, are just about limitless such as wind

Sustainable resource: Meet the needs of people now, without preventing future generations from meeting their own needs such as bio-fuels

Non-renewable resources: Being used up and cannot be replaced such as coil and oil. Finite resources

Renewable energy: wind power in the USA wind turbines convert the power of the wind into electricity. Now more than 13,000 large wind turbines in California, in 2012 wind energy provided 5% of California's total energy requirements. 

Sustainable energy: biogas in India biogas plants convert roganic matter, such as wood chips and animal dung. This ferments releasing methane gas. Collected by a tank and can be burnt to provide electricity or gas for cooking.

There were riots in many countries in West Africa and other parts of the globe, this is due to food insecurity. Rising standards of living and global population growth mean there's a greater demand for food. There's also a shortage of wheat, rising milk and rice prices and droughts in part of Africa. Due to this many people sturggle as the demadn is greater than the supply.

People of the future are likely to face these challenges:

• More expensive food
• More expensive ffuel more people will mean greater demand for oil etc
• Climate change more people will mean a greater release of CO2 into the atmosphere
• Water shortages - already many people in the world lack accesss to safe water
• More migration, people who are born in poor countries will migrate for quality of life
• Political instability and war, with more people competing for fewer resources=desperate time

Two different possibilites for future: There's not enough resources for population so mass starvation leads to a fall in population (Malthusian view). Future in which people successfully use technology in order to provide resources for growing population. (Boserupian view)

There are now high metal prices, they ahve reached record highs. USA imports a vast amount of metals and is using most of the supply whereas South America is importing little amounts but exporting a vast amount of metals.  

If metals continued to be used at the current rate there will be only around 45 years' supply of gold left, 46 of zinc, 29 of silver and 59 of uranium. Developed countries like the USA use vast quantities, if developed countries used them at the same rate resources would be gone even faster. Stocks of silver have declined world wide. Recycling silver is difficult, some can be recycled but most is lost. Therefore, supplies of silver are being used up incredibly fast and this is driving the price up. 

Oil is used in many things, fuels cars, heats buildings, provides electricity, used in plastics. It's finite. There is only so much oil under the ground once it's used up it will be gone. Oil consumption has risen from less than a million barrels a day in 1900 to 87 million barre;s a day by 2011. It's predicted to rise and the oil inudstry believes it's impossible to produce more than 100 million a day. Some countries use more oil than others due to population etc such as the USA as well as level of development, the USA a vast quantity of oil. 

Once peak oil is reached it will become more difficult and expensive to extract what's left. Oil pessimists believe world has already or is close to reaching peak oil. High oil prices are evidence of this. Oil optimists believe this point is decades away as there's so much oil to be discovered includig huge reserves of tar that can be refined in Canada.

When we reach peak oil demand will still be high unless we have developed alternatives, therefore, it could lead to wars due to the importance of oil. Countris that do not produce a lot of oil may see a decrease in consumption as prices are higher so people find alternatives. 

Local and national governments are trying to reduce their resource consumption to try and achieve sustainability. This can be done through education,conservation and recycling.

Education – changing behaviour à Advertising, schools, public awareness à reducing the use of non-renewables and using them more efficiently to be more sustainable.

Conservation – maintaining health of natural world à Grants, quotas, programmes taxes, laws etc. For example, national government has introduced a variable car tax which encourages people to buy smaller cars. National government has also set a target 15% of electricity should be renewable by 2020. The local government provides and manages spaces such as parks, green belts and local nature reserves. The national government also has offered 100% grants available to low-income households or those who live in an area with high fuel poverty, as improving insulation in houses reduces energy consumption as more heat is trapped inside the house. Loans in repaid instalments tha are added to the household's electricity bill over several years. These loans pay for home improvements to cut energy consumption such as secondary glazing. 

Recycling à Recycling centres, door to door recycling collection. National government introduced measures to fine companies that don’t recycle.