Human Consumption, Essay Example

Natural resources – fuels, materials, and water and food commodities – form the basis of all human activity (Matthews & Hammond 1999). Innovation is the way of the human race and our future. We are constantly trying to figure out and create new ways to change the production and consumption of material resources. The global primary energy supply (80 per cent of it supplied by fossil fuels) increased by 4 per cent annually from 1987 to 2004(United Nations Environment Programme, 2012). Other production of consumer goods is clothing, food, and fuel to name a few. The other consumption of environmental resources such as wood base products (trees consumption) poultry, breeding of livestock and contamination of water sources, and production of milk, eggs causes the environment to loose unreplaceable soil.Our human race has always been innovative from one century to the next.  It is a natural act that we constantly search for creative ways to change the production or consumption of material resources. Humans are many different types of consumption and production habits but we shall present 2 human production habits and 2 consumption habits. The human production process of creating goods such as the production of cotton for a number of products such as textile, yarn, automobile tire cords, fertilizer, and fuel. Most people do not know that humans produce plastic that is made from petroleum. In order to sustain the global population, every nation needs to adapt green alternatives and recycling programs to eliminate the draining of our precious material resources.

The human consumption habits can be traced to the consumption of food. The consumption of fish has put a strain on the global resources because the great demand for the fish. The seasonal fishing the oceans for fish have become a year round and global consumption that is depleting the natural resources of the ocean. Ecologically, the fish are not able to replenish because of the demand. The second human consumption is fuel for automobiles that is destroying the ozone with pollutants.  In our society today, human’s consumption is exhausting our limited environmental resource base. We are heading for an Ecological crisis if we do not better manage our resources.Take for example the United States. With around 5 percent of the world’s population, the US consumes about 40% of the world’s resources and emits around 21% of the world’s carbon dioxide, a greenhouse-causing gas (Shah, 2001).

References

Matthew.E. &Hammond, A. (1999),Critical consumption trends and implications: Degrading earth’s ecosystems. Retrieved from pdf.wri.org/critcons.pdf

Shah, A. (2001).Stress on environment, society, and resources?  Retrieved from http://www.globalissues.org/article/214/stress-on-the-environment-society-and-resources

United Nationals Environment Programme. (2012).The UN guide to claim neutrality. Retrieved from http://www.unep.org/publications/