I believe that our society is wasteful of natural resources.
There are several social and economic factors that influence this situation. In terms of social factors, one important reason for this is the economic inequality that exists between different countries, as well as between different social groups within a single country. Wealthy countries and wealthy people rely on luxury items that require a high level of resources to be used for their production. Moreover, developed societies in general employ natural resources in massive ways in order to sustain their lifestyle.
Economic factors are also important in this system. In order to sustain our economic system, trade between far away countries has to occur. This requires ships and planes that use natural resources to operate, such as oil. Moreover, our economy depends on constant consumption in order to survive, which also uses a large amount of natural resources.
There are some ways in which we can reduce our use of natural resources. For example, we can try to consume items that were produced locally. We can also reduce our use by not using items such as cars, which rely on non renewable resources to operate.
Some of the social and economic factors that would make it difficult for us to improve the way in which we use natural resources would be the fact that people are reluctant to alter their lifestyle, the fact that our economy depends on constant growth or the fact that not everyone can afford to reduce or replace their use of nonrenewable resources.
