Quote Originally Posted by JKDS
Quote Originally Posted by 2_Thumbs_Up
The statement "our need for electricity actually doubles every 10 or 12 years" is totally meaningless. Needs are always unlimited. If the consumtion of energy has doubled in any time period, it has happened only because our production of energy has doubled as well. It's our production that allows for our consumtion. So when he says that our need for electricity doubled, he is actually saying that we have become better at using availible resources in a beneficial way. We are simply more effective.

To think that we'll run out of resources soon is also completely wrong. The amount of resources in the world are almost endless. The biggest source of energy we have is the sun, and its depletion is something we won't have to worry about in the near future.
all resources or just the sun? Cuz everything else is most assuredly limited. How many people do you think we need before we start consuming more oxygen than can be produced? How about water? Lumber? Copper? Oil? Come on, you can't really think these are all unlimited...
The sun was just a fitting example since energy was the topic that's discussed. But lets look at some of the resources you mentioned. The entire earh is a gigantic ball of metals and minerals and we have merely scratched the surface of it. Also, these resources doesn't dissappear once we consume them. They simply shift from one form to another and they can be recycled and reused. Even if the amount of resources on the earth isn't infinite the economic value of them are. A tiny bit of cupper and silicon can be used as a razor or as parts in a CPU. The economic value of a finite amount of resources grow as we find better ways to use them.

Resources are matter. The amount of matter availible to us is pretty close to endless. The goal is to form this matter into things that are beneficial to us. This takes energy. As long as we have energy (and we will for a few million years at least), we'll be able to continously improve our standard of living.