Introduction - Metals and Society: An Introduction to Economic Geology - page 5

leads to the following question: why is platinum so much more expensive that
manganese?
Consider now the other two statements. Both focus on the idea that
resources of natural products such as metals and petroleum will soon be
totally mined out or exhausted. “Peak oil”, the notion that global production
of petroleum has already, or very soon will, pass through a maximum,
expresses the same idea. (You may have seen a TV program showing a sad
fleet of aircraft stranded at an airport, the last drops of kerosene having been
used up). Is this idea reasonable?
In the following section we discuss the notion that supplies of various types
of natural resources will be depleted or exhausted in the near future. We
conclude that none of the metals mentioned by the ecologists should be
described as “rare” and that petroleum supplies will never be completely
exhausted.
1.2 Peak Copper and Related Issues
One of the few natural products that went through a peak of production then
dramatically declined is, paradoxically, renewable. Spermaceti, a wax present in
the head cavities of the sperm whale, was an important product of the whaling
industry throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It was valued as high-
quality lamp oil and later used as a lubricant. “Peak spermaceti” occurred at the
start of the twentieth century when overfishing drastically reduced the number of
sperm whales. The price rose drastically and this led to a search for substitutes;
electric lighting replaced oil lamps, and oil from the jojoba plant was used as a
lubricant. The demand for the product diminished, in part a consequence of social
pressure to ban or restrict whaling. Now, as stocks of sperm whale slowly rebuild,
not even Japanese whalers talk of hunting them.
Box 1.2 Peak Spermaceti and Peak Oil
We have drawn a comparison between the production and consumption of
two very different products, petroleum and spermaceti. One is a natural
product, essentially renewable (if sperm whales are not hunted to extinction).
The other is a fossil resource that required millions of years to develop and is
no longer being produced in any quantity. One is a product that was used
widely in the nineteenth century, but only by a small and privileged part of
the world's population. The other is currently used throughout the world. It is
consumed by people rich and poor and is essential for our modern
industrialized society. The exhaustion of petroleum resources, if this were
ever to happen, would have a far more drastic impact than an absence of
spermaceti.
Is it ridiculous to associate spermaceti and petroleum (as suggested by one
reviewer of the topic), or does the comparison have some merit? Discuss.