Exhaustible and Inexhaustible Resources:
Now, we have to think about few questions to understand about need and importance of natural resources.
• Will the above resources be available for ever?
• Won’t we ever run out of air?
• Won’t we ever run out of water?
• Can these resources be exhausted by human activities?
• Do we have unlimited supply of coal and petroleum? Some energy sources like air and water are not exhaustible on usage. Hence these are called Inexhaustible resources coal and petroleum etc, are the energy sources which are exhaustible on usage. If this situation continues, in future we might have to depend on solar energy. Is wood an inexhaustible resource?
Think about using wood for making furniture.
• What will happen if all the forests are cut down and the wood is used for various purposes?
• How long do you think it would take to grow the forests again?
There are many resources like trees which will be depleted if we don’t make judicious use of them.
• How long the fossil fuel like petroleum will be available? Is it inexhaustible?
We need petroleum not just as a fuel but also for several other uses as we will see later in this chapter.Resources therefore can be classified as inexhaustible and exhaustible depending on whether they are expected to last forever or not.
• What will happen if fossil fuel like coal and petroleum are completely exhausted?
• What would be our future energy resources?
The entire Research and Development (R&D) in the field of sources of energy shows that at the present rate of use of the conventional energy sources like fossil fuels will not last for long. Presently only 10% of non-conventional energy resources like solar energy, wind energy, tidal energy, etc, are used. These are inexhaustible resources and abundantly available in nature.