Primary production and humanosphere--is energy sufficient for sustainable humanosphere?
There is a growing concern about the sustainability of our humanosphere. Realizing that our consumption of natural resources is soon to exhaust available ones in this globe, we feel the need for more prudent ways to utilize them. In particular, the need would be greater in the ways for the use of the primary products as we are to continue to face the rapid increase in human population. On the contrary, however, we are rapidly losing the traditional customs of their many uses. For instance, rice straws were once a significant raw material for many manufactured products in Japan, while most of them are now simply burned in the paddy. Here I would like to review the current status of primary production on the Earth from the viewpoint of material cycling and to demonstrate that, unless we quickly turn around our ever-increasing demand for more material and more energy, the humanosphere would never enter a stable phase. At the year 2006 A.D., the energy demand of a possibly sustainable humanosphere surpasses the available energy through the global primary production.
Mizutani
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Department of Basic Sciences, Senshu University of Ishinomaki, Japan.
D000383:Agriculture; D017756:Aquaculture; D018533:Biomass; D002244:Carbon; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources; D018534:Earth, Planet; D004463:Ecology; D017753:Ecosystem; D004736:Energy-Generating Resources; D004779:Environment Design; D006801:Humans; D008954:Models, Biological; D012993:Solar Energy
D002244:Carbon