As a human race, our thirst for goods, has grown since the industrial revolution gave us the means to provide. Up till then the human race had an endless supply of natural resources at their fingertips to consume. However, the need was not that great. Most advanced civilizations, prior to the 1800’s utilized resources that they could only gather by themselves. There was very little mass production for mass consump

Another theme brought out in these papers, is the notion that as individuals we can not be relied upon to manage the usage of these resources, and therefore a regulatory agency or governmental bureaucracy must be relied upon to enforce and regulate our consumption. In the “Robber Barrons..” article, the decline of a governmental authority within this area, delegated the control of the forest preservation to the world preservationist who could only use limited powers of persuasion in their quest to stop the deforestation of the tropical rain forest. On our earth where consumption is by all who inhabit it, and where we have societies at differing levels of sophistication, we can argue the effectiveness of such regulatory organizations.

Since then the explosion of consumption by mankind has strained the natural resources to the point of depletion. Our unquenched thirst to have all that can be offered to us, without regard to the fragile ecosystems that these materials or resources come from, are the topic’s of the articles I have read.

As the world becomes more populated, and consumption of resources grows, it is argued that mere conservation will not be able to stem the depletion of these materials. In the article titled “No Middle Way on the Environment” the author points out the fact that there will be hard choices we will be faced to make in the near future, if consumption and population controls are not implemented soon. This author’s opinion suggest that there may be benefits to technological advances in reduction of consumption but there are also negative effects of these advances as they hinder other aspects of resour

Some topics in this essay:
Planet” Rauch, Myers Salzman, Much” Sagoff, Middle Environment”, Studies Paper, Mark Sagoff, materials resources, raw materials, Dan Murphy, technological advances, “no middle environment”, consumption raw materials, middle environment”, economic pressures, depletion materials, human race, “no middle, natural resources, hard choices,