Theme 3

The Earth contains all sorts of resources that humans use, both renewable and non-renewable. We rely heavily on these resources, yet we do not always realize that some of the resources that we use cannot be replaced fast enough to meet the demands of the humans around the world. According to our textbook a renewable resource is something that is “virtually unlimited or rapidly replaced.” It also says that a non-renewable resource is something that is “limited and replaced only on very long timescales” (p. 103). Some renewable resources are things like sunlight, wind energy, and geothermal energy, while non-renewable resources are things like crude oil, natural gas, coal, copper aluminum, and other metals.

Theme 3 also talks about another key concept, which was biodiversity. This is the “variation in living things at all levels of organization” (p. 104). Within biodiversity there are different types of diversities such as species, genetic, and ecosystem diversity. This biodiversity allows things on earth to change and adapt to the new environment that we are creating through our pollution and consumption of resources on earth. Without biodiversity things on earth would start to become extinct because of a lack of diversity. This diversity is needed to help keep species and ecosystems healthy by getting rid of weak links in the genetics of a species, or the weak links in an ecosystem. Biodiversity provides humans with clean air, food, fuel, shelter, controls disease, and many other things.