Week ten Thermodynamics and resource limitation

Thermodynamics and resource limitation

Thermodynamics is the science concerned with the relation between heat and mechanical energy or work and the conversion of one into the other(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/thermodynamics).
So is there any relationship possible between thermodynamics and resources?
Thermodynamics use certain laws. Those laws are:
1. Energy can be changed from one form to another, but it can neither be created nor destroyed.
2. In all energy exchanges, if no energy enters or leaves the system, the potential energy of the state will always be less than that of the initial state. Also known as enthropy : organisms cease to take in energy and die
(http://www2.estrellamountain.edu/faculty/farabee/biobk/biobookener1.html).

In other words, a closed system has limits
If you have an exceptional rise in the consumption of any matter, than in time the matter will run out.Unchecked consumption will inevitably exhaust the supply in the fullness of time.
Economists and market fundamentalists often mistake functional supply with absolute supply.
If something becomes too expensive to make use of, we may replace it with something that is easier to access. But shifting between replacable matters still means the earth's resources are not unlimited.
Sometimes people say that because past predictions about the earth's limits were proven wrong, our future is not in danger. But, "just because it hasn't happened yet, it doesn't mean it will not" (http://www.terrafiniti.com/blog/aligning-economics-and-thermodynamics/).
Ofcourse innovation, technology and ingenuity can give us some solutions to problems related to limited resources. Bit all these solutions will have to be taken within the framework of a finite Earth.
People who see environmentalists as doom mongers hope that technology will one day provide the answers to global challenges. But if you look at the laws of thermodynamics, you clearly see that current economic patterns contradict with these laws. Once it's gone, it cannot come back. Unless we can apply rules which subvert these laws, we have to make our decisions by them. That means humanity has to evolve with creativity and ingenuity to survive current challenges
(http://www.terrafiniti.com/blog/aligning-economics-and-thermodynamics/).