These will be followed by a panel discussion on the role of earth resource extraction in sustainable development.

UNESCO: Basic Sciences

Session III: The Next Steps, will provide an opportunity for the experts in attendance to make recommendations on what actions are required for biosphere reserves faced with earth resource extraction.

UNESCO: Basic Sciences

In other words, they are a sort of savior-entity attempting to address the issue of scarcity and resource depletion by rescuing Earth (and Mars, as well as many other planets) from self-destruction by pooling our resources with a potentially unlimited number of other planets throughout the universe.

FORBES: Aliens, Global Warming, and the Intergalactic Arms Race

The two superpowers are competing over a valuable new resource -- the rare earth elements used in the construction of nearly all smartphones, tablets and other electronic gadgets.

CNN: The future world of 'Call of Duty: Black Ops II'

Originally designed to coincide with the BBC film Earth, this site has grown into a resource of its own.

BBC: Love Earth

Further, study of the captured space rock could teach researchers how to efficiently extract water from asteroids a resource that could be an off-Earth source of radiation shielding and rocket fuel for journeying spacecraft.

MSN: NASA might lasso an asteroid and drag it to orbit near moon

Bhappu, a 50-year-old partner at private equity firm Resource Capital Funds, has known about rare earth minerals and Molycorp his whole life.

FORBES: The Money Man Behind America's Rare Earth Minerals

My mention of mineral resource vulnerability may surprise some but I should point out the heavy dependency of rare earth minerals in technology such as mobile devices and consumer electronics, and the limited supply we have.

FORBES: Technological Risks Impacting the World in 2013

Resource Capital has not realized a penny from its investment in Molycorp, which aims to produce rare earth minerals (used in things like electric cars, wind turbines and iPods) at a previously shuttered mine in Mountain Pass, Calif.

FORBES: Magazine Article