Resources in our future

With all the reports of doom and gloom involving resource materials for the future, the author is not discouraged and continues to believe that human inventiveness and adaptability can work to make our future secure, that most resources are sufficient for a very long time, and that effective substitutes can be found for those that are vital and rapidly becoming less accessible. There are eventual limits, he admits, such as space for population, and probably waste-heat accumulation and these are difficult obstacles. Other difficulties include such obstacles as the development of an abundant, clean energy source with a reasonable price tag. There are problems of food production and distribution that will test our humanity and there is always the risk of nuclear war. Two areas in which we must make a great deal of progress rapidly are energy and safeguarding the environment. Cost, not scarcity, is the most-important short-term problem, and Mr. Hitch sees that the US could tolerate a doubling to $30 per barrel of oil during the next 3 decades. With a concern about resources running out, he recommends stretching supplies by including advanced converter reactors, breeders, and the use of thorium. He suggests that we at leastmore » develop those nuclear, synthetics-from-coal, oil-from-shale, and other technologies that promise to provide a long-run ceiling for energy costs. A third policy implication is that we get on with conservation.And the common property resources, the air, the oceans, aspects of fresh waters and land, outer space, garbage dumps could be utilized. Humankind is resourceful and creative enough for our future to be secure, he concludes. (MCW)« less