REM 350 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Sewage Treatment, Natural Capital, Unconventional Oil
23 Apr 2016
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Document Summary
The human economy like the human body transforms energy and materials. Resource input endurance-energy and material inputs should endure without decreasing services they provide. Non-toxicity of waste output-energy and material outputs must be benign to the receiving environment, recycled within the human economy, or captured and safely stored. Discovery and exploitation of a finite resource to follow a bell-shaped curve over time. The assumption is that as we pass the global peak in production, prices will rise and stay high. Ignores feedback relationship between price, exploration effort, technology, and discovery development. Rising price shifts curve to the right and peaks upward. Gradual dispersion of toxins into water and soils. Failure of setting ponds, pipeline rupture, major fire, oil tanker spill, rail accident. Carbon budget-amount of carbon left to burn to keep temperature increases within 2c. Natural capital-the ability of the environment to provide humans with resource inputs and waste assimilative capacity.
