We are quickly approaching a place where scarcity is going to be a major problem. The use of our natural resources to depletion and the destruction of our environment is very quickly catching up to us. I really liked this article because it gave an exquisite timeline of how we have had poor resource management.
A few different concepts stood out to me as I was reading this paper. For one thing, over the years, our human population developed a solar energy dependent community, which has been replaced by our fossil fuel dependent communities. Even more alarming to me, was that even our food production, which is one of the most organic processes we need for survival has become dependent on fossil fuel consumption. Our need to consume our resources had grown so much that we ended up destroying the resources we had (clean, drinkable water) to use other resources in greater numbers.Eventually this will come back to haunt us because then water will become scarce, which is something that is vital to our (and every other organism on the planet’s) survival.
I really liked the way this article shows the importance of integrating resource management and urban planning. Since cities hold such large populations and has been growing choice of place to live world wide, it is imperative that we acknowledge this in the most efficient ways possible. I thought it was very interesting that urban planning and resource management had developed separately. I thought this was interesting because it seems like common sense. (Granted, I may be biased because of hindsight.) Urban planning should have been working in harmony with resource management, which would have bred sustainable development. Now we find ourselves in a place where all of these things are working against each other.
I think a common theme that we are seeing in recent papers is innovation. One of the most important things that can help us change our situation is a change of mindset in he way we think about our existence (socially, structurally, physically, etc.).
