Human curiosity gives rise to research, development and technical progress. Technical progress is accompanied by various developments. Firstly, it is used to develop new products, meaning that the use of resources increases. Secondly, it helps to make the production of products more efficient, so that the resources required per functional unit are reduced. Thirdly, economic growth driven by automation, rationalization and income growth obviously increases the absolute use of resources. Resources can be summarized as follows: energy, raw materials and the environment.
The current discussion is dealing with the excessive and even existentially threatening consumption of resources. It can be reduced by using renewable energy, recycling raw materials and protecting the environment. The use of renewable energy and recycling are discussed on this page, while environmental protection is the subject of a separate sheet.
Environmental pollution caused by the consumption of fossil fuels is currently being increasingly replaced by the use of renewable energy. This approach has one weakness, however, when it comes to comparing supply and demand profiles for renewable energy over time. Spikes in demand are relatively expensive to cover when there is a temporary shortage of wind and solar energy. The idea of overcoming expensive demand peaks by temporarily reducing demand and, in particular, production peaks, is worth considering, provided that this is technically feasible. Thus, incomes would increase correspondingly less.
The consumption of many raw materials can be reduced by recycling. To do this, the use of raw materials would logically have to be planned in such a way that recyclability is taken into account. The design would have to be such that products could be disassembled in preparation for recycling. The additional work required for recycling would probably come into conflict with the acceptance problems of the people involved, because their growth successes and incomes would be lower. However, it also becomes clear to what extent the people involved have been willing to increase their prosperity at the expense of resource consumption. Economic development has not produced it in order to sustainably conserve resources through recycling in order to secure the future. This protection is obviously not possible as part of a self-regulating market economy.
It makes sense to generate renewable energy specifically in areas with maximum solar radiation and good wind conditions. In conjunction with a rather medium wage level, recycling would be economically feasible there. People working there would no longer have to work for the lowest wages for rich countries. With a medium wage level, cheap renewable energy and raw materials obtained in part through recycling, they could operate a sustainable and competitive economy in certain market segments compared to rich countries and achieve an adequate standard of living. This would make it possible to reduce polarization globally.