What are some positive or negative human impacts on energy conservation?

We need to conserve energy and resources at any cost. We should use the available resources more efficiently and carefully to get optimum long term social benefits. There is no negative impact of energy conservation. Save water, save energy and be more eco friendly. Simple things we can start at home to save water and energy. Take shorter showers, reuse grey water, fix leaky faucets and sprinkles, wash full loads of laundry and dishes. See this link http://www.bewaterwise.com/tips01.html to read more tips on saving water.

It take a lot of energy to pump, convey and treat water. So, all of those people living in Southern California who receive water from northern California are directly responsible for more energy use.

There is no negative to energy conservation other than perhaps that it can cause economic slowdowns. Energy = Economy. It took me a long time to figure this one out despite years of experience in the energy business. A talk show that I was listening to as I worked one day had a guest who talked about Energy and Economy and efficiencies. He had it dead right...a light went on in my brain! The industrialized countries who have succeeded the best economically were developed because of cheap energy and the efficient use of energy and related services and products. Example - Japan have NO energy but are efficient exporters of it as manufactured products. The US have very little oil (relative to their economy) but have ensured a cheap and continuous supply of cheap energy into their country and again they export that energy as value added manufacturing products. The US cheap energy policy was instituted by Regan and pursued by every President since then (including Clinton). The only President who did not pursue a cheap energy policy was Carter, who did so because of the inevitable backlash against the US by the Middle East and other OPEC countries. Americans died for oil in Iraq and in Vietnam, they just don't call it such nor recognize the sacrifice of those who died as being for that purpose. They use the term "American strategic interests" instead. Make no mistake, the sacrifice is very real and also very necessary in order to preserve the US way of life and for that matter the North American, European and Asian way of life (within the Democracies). Nobody likes to think of war in those terms, and it seems extremely callous, but it is nonetheless a fact! Conservation is the ONE thing that North Americans can do in order to improve their own economy (balance of trade) however there is a very fine line between conscious conservation and economic stupidity! The previous poster is correct..we are definitely running out of oil and gas. By 2035 there will be a critical under supply from both, and the North American economy will suffer greatly. Studies that I have seen can only realistically depend on coal to fill the under supply. It is just a fact of life. You will never get the amount of wind or solar or geothermal needed to fill the void, in a sufficiently timely fashion, to fill that void...at least in a free market economy. Please remember that nuclear = 8% of US energy, with wind, solar, geothermal and hydro at about 3% of energy. Now coal supplies 22% and in 25 years that will need to be 30% or more. Wind - agricultural losses to the economy. solar - lack of storage ability for the energy produced and major infrastructure costs, geothermal - lack of natural geothermal sources (Yellowstone Park ..tear it up?). There is tremendous potential for deep brine heat from existing producing oil and gaswells, but they cannot be tapped without the cooperation of oil companies and the government working together. Biofuels - a great big politically driven waste of money that somehow believes in a "perpetual motion machine" to make "oil" using about 0.01% of the carbon feedstock that the Earth naturally has produced over 500 million years. It is a very bad JOKE! I hope this helps you a bit.