Running Out of Renewable Resources

Matt Ridley, author of the wonderful book The Rational Optimist has an interesting op/ed over at the Wall Street Journal arguing that it is renewable resources rather than non-renewable resources that appear to be at most risk of being depleted. Tropical forests chopped down to make charcoal or grow palm oil; fisheries so depleted of fish that they may never come back; and there may be significant thermodynamic limits to the amount of energy that can be globally extracted from wind.

Ridley concludes:

All in all, once you examine it closely, the idea that "renewable" energy is green and clean looks less like a deduction than a superstition.

Whole op/ed is here.