The Depletion of Non-Renewable Abiotic Resources - Thanatia: The Destiny of the Earth's Mineral Resources - page 5

12,000,000

Exergy, ktoe

10,000,000

8,000,000

Coal

6,000,000

4,000,000

Oil

2,000,000

N. Gas

0

Fig.1.2Productionoftheworld'sconventionalfuelsthroughoutthe20thcentury.Valuesare
expressedinexergyunits

and nickel (Wellmer and Steinbach, 2011), contributing to billions of tonnes of waste
rock 4 . In addition, based on figures from the late 1990s, mining was responsible for
13% of the global sulphur dioxide emissions whilst an estimated 40% of the land
used by mankind was threatened by the sector's activities. Halada et al. (2008)
made a forecast based on a linear decoupling model relating to the per capita metal
consumption versus GDP per capita for BRICs 5 and the G6 6 . According to this
forecast, by 2050, collective metal consumption will surpass current levels some
fivefold whilst the demand of very important ones (Au;Ag;Cu;Ni;Sn;Zn;Pb and
Sb) will be greater than their current reserves. This is despite the fact that the
mining sector contributes at 0.5%, only a tiny fraction of direct employment and
represents only 0.9% of the “gross world product” (Sampat, 2003). The true costs:
the depletion of non-renewable resources and the degradation of ecosystems are
much larger and continue to climb.
Nature is no longer found in abundance. If it were, perhaps the contribution of
mining would not be so devastating. The intense technological development of the
20th century is however forcing society, ever increasingly aware of the detrimental

4 About 900 million tonnes of metals were extracted in 2000, leaving aside more than six billion
tonnes of waste rock (Whitmore, 2006).
5 BRIC refers to Brazil, Russia, India and China, which are all deemed to be at a similar stage
of newly advanced economic development.
6 G6: an acronym that refers to the six world's wealthiest countries: France, Germany, Italy,
Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States.