From Thermodynamics to Economics and Ecology - Thanatia: The Destiny of the Earth's Mineral Resources - page 83

The marketplace is where everything is exchanged and value is a function of how
much one is willing to pay. The myth that “bigger is better”, rising to prominence
in the 20th century, has been a subjacent idea in western thinking and Economics
(the daughter of interest and utility). This idea together with a sense of limit-
less resources and technoptimism leads to the most terrifying of reductions, where
Man irreversibly converts natural goods into monetary capital, as if money were
completely substitutable for Nature. Indeed, even an immensely powerful financial
system, capable of either enriching or impoverishing entire countries, could never as
a matter of fact recreate the complexity of the simplest of life forms - the amoeba.
Natural resources are finite and once extracted they irreversibly lose their ability
to support the web of life and since the wealth of nations ultimately comes from
natural resources and not from markets, sooner or later it will disappear.
Huxley (1980) argued that the human species has become the first geologic
force of the planet, an idea thought to have originated from Stoppani (1873) who
wrote about the “anthropozoic era” (which Crutzen (2002) recently coined “Anthro-
pocene”) identifying: “a new telluric force so strong and universal that it can be
compared to the great Earth forces”. Since and before then neither air, nor water
or the soil have escaped Man's actions (alteration). Thousands of millions of tonnes
are turned over annually to extract minerals and rocks for building and extending
cities. Rivers are dominated and manipulated with dams, coasts are extensively
modified and water is desalted from the sea. None of this comes cheap and all re-
quire fossil fuels, which in turn modify the chemical composition of the atmosphere
and hence the climate.
Such issues can be related to the Thermodynamic concept of the thermal reser-
voir, where temperature does not change regardless of how much heat one introduces
or removes. The same concept applies to a mass reservoir, whereby chemical com-
position does not change even with an addition or extraction of materials. The
reservoir is the required theoretical basis in Physics for a comprehensive under-
standing of the limits of the behaviour of matter. Man takes this idealisation as a
matter of fact by considering the Earth as practically inexhaustible. This sense of
infinity motivates predation. Yet, in terms of materials, Earth is a closed system
subject to physical limits. There is after all only one nest and everything is in and
consists of that nest. If it is not taken care of, humankind will only serve to poison
itself. As such, one should replace what is destroyed and develop management and
accounting tools to accomplish this.
These tools require a theoretical and philosophical base, naturally provided by
Thermodynamics. For a thermodynamicist, this fact is so obvious, that it is hard
to believe the very little systematic effort devoted to it. The Second Law through
exergy and the reference environment allows for the first small but very important
steps. This is because it converts concepts into numbers and transforms them into
objective and universal indicators which can be quantitatively used to evaluate the
true level of planetary destruction as a consequence of societal activity. This is in
short, the objective of this topic, particularly in terms of mineral resource depletion.