Description

1.1 Introduction

We live on a planet with finite resources. The developed technologies can rearrange matter to better suit our convenience, and extract energy by reaching farther and farther into the depths of the Earth, the limits to this process have become evident.

The world population is currently growing fast and will continue to grow in the future. It is confronted with a natural resource supply that is ultimately limited. The total use of natural resources and energies will have to shrink in future centuries, even when several energy and raw material deposits have not been fully exploited so far. This is a fundamental change in economic history because up to now, the expanding world economy has relied on growing resource input. Hence, a classical theme of economics has again become very topical: the relationship between population growth, natural resource scarcity, and the sustainability of development.