Being sustainable is defined as having the ability to maintain at a certain level. Sometimes people relate having sustainable growth with using renewable energy, as they believe if we only use fossil fuels, one day when fossil fuels are run out, our development and growth will eventually drop and there is a danger for our society to collapse as our society is based on energy. They believe if we use renewable energy since such energy will never be run out, our society will be always supported by energy and our growth will continue and be sustainable. I do not agree with this point.
When our societies and economies are expanding and growing, there must be an increase in the demand for energy. Of course, renewable energy so far seems infinite and it can meet our demand for energy forever once we have sufficient technology. However, people may forget that we need to build machines to transform the renewable energy to the energy that actually can be used in our lives, for example, we need to solar panels to transform solar energy into electrical energy. The energy transformation machines are not built by recyclable materials. Even if they are built by recyclable materials, when our demands for energy increase, the demands for such transformation machines also increase. Therefore, as long as there is a cap on the total amount of recyclable materials, recyclable materials will still be eventually run out one day.
Therefore, I believe that in order to have a sustainable growth, we have to always look for new available resources and energy. Because based on my above point, the continuous increasing demands for resources has to be paralleled with an increasing supply of resources. Of course, prices can change and cope the situation of unparalleled demand and supply changes; however, when there is no supply in the market but the demands still exist, the economy would face a disaster. Moreover, it is impossible to have a self-sufficient society and economy. Even if we have very advanced technology that all objectives can be transformed from one into another, when such transformation is not perfect and there is no 100% transformation, such transformation cycle will be not complete and will stop at one point.
Overall, I believe our human beings have to seek for more available resources on the earth, if necessarily, we should seek for more resources in the space outside our earth, in order to support a continuous and sustainable growth.
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