Resources and the future

https://arbital.com/p/246

by Eric Bruylant Feb 26 2016

Resource constraints are a widely held concern. Which are most likely to be limiting factors, and what can we do to relax those limits?


Exhausting fossil fuels, depleted/polluted aquifers and rivers, growing population's food needs, rainforest being cleared to provide farmland, and limited supplies of rare earth metals for electronics and batteries. Each of these problems is caused by resource scarcity.

Clearly, each of these needs solutions. But, as effective altruists, we need to go beyond that and critically analyze which of these problems will do the most harm in absence of our intervention, and what options there are for counteracting the effects of the ones we work on.

This a crowdsourced body of knowledge aimed at giving EAs a brief general overview of the major considerations with links out to more detailed content across the web.