eportfolio Ian Alvarez

All too often our global society takes for granted the very resources that make our day-to-day lives possible. The food in our stomachs, the clothes on our back, the electricity that powers our lives all derives from natural resources. But do these resources have a limit? Are we rapidly approaching a world where we no longer worry ourselves with the newest fashions and latest trends? A world where not only the poor struggle to attain the basic necessities of life, everyone dose. This is the very question addressed in David E. Nye’s “Sustainable Abundance, or Ecological Crisis?”.
For almost 300 years many within the scientific community have argued that our small planet has a limited “carrying capacity” or a limit to how many people this world can support.1 The estimates very greatly, but they are formulate based on such figures as available arable land and clean drinking water.2 Nye on the other hand presents an argument that depicts the worlds potential carrying capacity as flexible and that our world’s resources are not limited but that our ability to utilize them is the only limitation. He argues that technology and culture govern the use of our resources and dictate our ability to distribute them in a way that benefits us all. This argument seems much more realistic than that of those pose before him.
Between 1830 and 1890 our country experienced an agricultural revolution that greatly outlines the impact of technology on humanities ability to capitalize on our natural resources. A farmer in 1890 could produce at least 200% more than his counterpart 60 years before.3 This tremendous increase in crop yields was due to an industrial revolution constantly churning out new technological inventions. Gas powered machinery, new irrigation techniques, and increased understandings of fertilization and harvesting allowed for the mid western states to rapidly become the breadbasket of the world. These advances in technology allowed for people to produce more food in the same amount of area with less overhead costs. In essence technology allowed for the same area to have a greater carrying capacity and in turn increased the worlds carrying capacity. Since the 1890’s we have continued to introduce technological advances that have further increased our ability to produce food but simple food production is not the only factor when discussing the limits of our planet.
For over a century now we have continued to use fossil fuels as our primary source for energy. This has created a dependency on limited resources while greatly damaging the world’s environment. Our global community has begun to see the harmful affects of this in global warming and astronomically high oil prices. So in response to the negative affects of