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First resource of human beings

 Soc 370 – Environment and Society

Humans and natural resources

What does the earth, the environment ‘do’ for humans, other species?

In very general terms, the earth serves three functions for humans.

  1. First, it provides them with living space.
  2. Second, it serves as a stock of resourcesthat humans use to meet various needs.
  3. Third, it serves as a waste repository. We have to put our waste somewhere, right? I don’t just mean human waste–solid waste, toxic waste, there’s air and water pollution, heat, etc.

Now most societies figure out that the better they separate these three functions, the better their living conditions will be. You don’t live in the middle of the forest you’re cutting down for your houses. You don’t dump your waste in your back yard, ‘foul your nest,’ so to speak. And of course the environment provides us with more than material wealth. We’ll discuss the role of natural resources in all this.

What do humans use resources for?

  • Water (drinking, agricultural, residential use, industrial/commercial, recreation, power generation, etc.)
  • Soil (especially topsoil, used to grow food, sustain forests, pasture, etc.)
  • Trees (forests, provide us with timber, pulp, shade, carbon sinks, wildlife habitat, etc.)
  • Minerals (metals, fossil fuels, gems, rock-cement, roads)
  • Animals, fish (we eat them, use them for clothing, leather, etc.)
  • Just something to think about: does nature have value in and of itself? Or only when humans define some part of it as a ‘resource?’

We get food, shelter, clothing, transportation, infrastructure–all this from natural resources. What do we get, of a physical nature, that doesn’t come from natural resources (hint: rhetorical question)?

Where do they come from? From underground, forests and mountains, the land (think soil here), atmosphere (rain), oceans and rivers, etc. Often from rural areas. Cities may have originally located close to resources–rivers, sources of timber, good agricultural land, etc.

And how do humans get natural resources?

The resource process

It’s useful to think of a resource process, that goes from discovery of a resource–either a new source of something we already know, or a new resource humans have never considered useful before–to its transformation (for like energy, matter can neither be created nor destroyed):

Here are the general stages of the resource process:

  1. Discovery–All resources are sociallydefined–they’re not considered ‘resources’ until we find some economic use for them. Not all culture define resources in the same way. For instance, we discussed how human feces are a valuable resource for paddy rice farming in China (referred to as ‘night soil’–we won’t get into details of how this particular resource process works). Petroleum had to be discovered, and then much research done before many people realized its potential value as a highly concentrated source of energy. And as for ‘biosolids’ (above link), let your imagination run wild.
  2. Cultivation/extraction-the raw material–in the case of agriculture, we cultivate. In the case of timber, we log. In the case of petroleum, we drill.
  3. Transportation–this entails getting it from the source (this is the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline route) where it was extracted, to a place where it can be consumed, refined, etc. With timber, we’ve used rail, trucks, rivers, etc. With petroleum we use pipelines, huge oil tankers that can carry well over 1 million gallons of oil, and require quite a bit of fuel just to run.
  4. Processing-what does it get turned into? For whom? Where? In the case of petroleum, it goes to refineries (picture your new home next to this), and heating produces different grades of fuels. Some of the stuff that is left in the process may be used as tar on roads, or as low-grade lubricants. Refineries are often located near ports, where tankers can navigate, but in the U.S. we have lots of refineries (and our own sources of oil). Timber may go to pulp or sawmills, minerals to smelters and (this from copper), crops to food processing plants, mills, water through some sort of treatment facility. We’ve come a long way since Henry Ford’s era. Sort of.
  5. Distribution (this was Iraq before the US invasion in 2003)–getting it out to consumers.  How do we get the refined product(s) out to the consumer markets? Take the case of Iowa Beef Processors. They may buy cattle from all over the U.S., and have it shipped to the Midwest for slaughter and processing, and then ship it back to various retail/wholesale chains (which may be vertically integrated multinational food conglomerates … ). For petroleum it means tankers on the road or by rail, lots of trucks, ships and plans delivering our freight.
  6. Transformation (Arlington Landfill, which takes most of Portland’s garbage)–Matter, like energy, can’t be created or destroyed (shipbreaking [in Bangladesh], electronics, plastic). Just transformed. Thus consumers don’t really ‘consume’ the stuff they buy, just transform it, with a large portion entering some waste stream. In some cases, in China for instance, food consumed may become ‘night soil.’ Lumber in a house may be transformed slowly–houses tend to last a while (the lumber industry in Oregon wants you to think of logging as ‘carbon sequestration‘–it’s more complex than that). Paper degrades more quickly, but can be recycled (but even then there are by-products, usually lots of bleach). You should be getting the idea. There may be multiple steps. For instance, pesticides and fertilizers may be delivered to farmers, who then use them to cultivate crops (as inputs in a process of resource production). Some of the fertilizer ends up in the atmosphere as a greenhouse gas (nitrous oxide). Those combusted also produce greenhouse gases, principally carbon dioxide.

Now if this seems pretty straightforward and linear, remember:

  • At every step of the process-more energy and more resources are needed and consumed (each need triggering its own process from extraction through transformation)
  • Huge differences exist between industrial vs non-industrial societies (quantity and quality of the energy, resources?), but important relationships (who’s selling the resources, who’s buying?).
  • Ownership and access are critical issues, and highly unequal globally
  • Market forces, the price of goods, sustainability, and externalized costscreate more complications, demand for goods, and environmental impacts
  • Footprints (US vs world)–how societies ‘walk’ across the planet (our impact)
  • Doing things differently (the 3 Rs, biomimicry, etc.) is possible, but meets up with entrenched political and economic interests.

Maps Mania: Global Carbon Emissions on Google Maps

global carbon emissions, wri.org.

Resources:

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