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The world seems to be running out of resources: even the least obvious ones.
Are there any solutions? Do you personally even care about the future of the mankind?
If you care - have you done/ going to do anything personally to help alleviate the problems?
Should we focus on teaching our children about these emerging problems?
Or just hide our head in the sand and live as if nothing is happening?
Just a few examples of the resources we are running out...
There seem to be hundreds of 'alarmist' articles bemoaning fears the world will cease to exist or support humanity, unless everyone immediately takes draconian measures to "save the planet." The three articles you provided are good examples, in their nebulous threats that the world is running out of sand, water and phosphorous ... and others of the same ilk.
Even when environmental groups gain any traction in these areas, their proposed answers invariably produce only more regulations, bureaucracy, studies and taxes devoted to those pursuits ... none of which actually change anything. This type of biased, academic agenda, rather than a shared concern that the "sky is actually falling" is probably why so few feel the need to take "personal action to alleviate these problems and 'save' the world,"
The world seems to be running out of resources: even the least obvious ones.
Are there any solutions? Do you personally even care about the future of the mankind?
If you care - have you done/ going to do anything personally to help alleviate the problems?
Should we focus on teaching our children about these emerging problems?
Or just hide our head in the sand and live as if nothing is happening?
Your premise is highly biased. What kind of question is "do you personally even care about the future of mankind?" Who, other than a sociopath, is going to answer that question in the negative?
jghorton's response exactly matches what I would have said. There is no shortage of climate-change alarmists who loudly proclaim that this or that resource is almost depleted, and the temperatures are skyrocketing (or is it declining?) due to man-made influences, and we'd better take drastic action immediately. Such action invariably involves confiscating our money and reducing our quality of life.
And really, we're running out of sand? It reminds me of the quote attributed to Milton Friedman: "If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years there'd be a shortage of sand."
We are not running out of sand, deserts? Nor oil, nor Natural gas, nor water? Oceans, Great Lakes? The only people who believe this nonsense are the ones who want it for their political agenda, and their sheep, who love govt handouts.
Your premise is highly biased. What kind of question is "do you personally even care about the future of mankind?" Who, other than a sociopath, is going to answer that question in the negative?
jghorton's response exactly matches what I would have said. There is no shortage of climate-change alarmists who loudly proclaim that this or that resource is almost depleted, and the temperatures are skyrocketing (or is it declining?) due to man-made influences, and we'd better take drastic action immediately. Such action invariably involves confiscating our money and reducing our quality of life.
And really, we're running out of sand? It reminds me of the quote attributed to Milton Friedman: "If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years there'd be a shortage of sand."
Sociopaths are people too!
I would not call a person a sociopath simply if he/she honestly does not see a point of worrying about the mentioned issues - maybe due to their age or just being pessimistically pragmatic- or not having any heirs, or hating people, or genuinely not interested in the affairs of the world.
I could think of more reasons. - hence the question
When phosphorus gets scarce and expensive earths population will plummet, large scale farming will be impossible without it.
That seems to be the ag problem du jour in the popular press, but seeing as several states in the Midwest have so much in the soil, they've regulated against adding any, and levels in CA's central valley have been rising (now if you want to talk about salinization there, which nobody seems to want to do, that's different), so where's the problem, except in the profit column of the fertilizer companies' ledger books? (Most of the P is tied up in the stalks & leaves. "No till" keeps that in the field now, slowing down the loss of P.)
Sand in short supply? Hard to believe since silica (main chemical in sand) makes up 59% of the Earth's crust.
Importing Fe from an asteroid would be quite expensive, not to mention difficult, but more importantly, stupid: the whole core of the planet is Fe. Drill a well, if it comes to that.
70% of the planet is covered by water. Never will be a shortage. Desalinization to produce fresh water is so easy & cheap now, Israel exports it.
JOBS will be the shortest stave in the barrel of factors required to support a growing population, not a natural resource.
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