The Challenge of Resource Depletion - Thanatia: The Destiny of the Earth's Mineral Resources - page 452

extracted in all previous history 1 . To this one needs to add the fact that control of
the most critical supplies lies in the hands of very few countries and/or companies.
That is to say that the provision of minerals is not geographically linked to demand.
This phenomenon is a source of economic problems, not to mention those related
to the sharing of information which is often protected in the name of national
interests and security. Policymakers thus need to develop long term prudent plans
which take into account the convergence of both the price increase of commodities
and innovative technologies for material recycling and substitution. They will also
have to ensure access to critical minerals via stockpiling, as is already done with
oil. Moreover, research should be promoted to tackle multi-dimensional resource
dependency.
In addition to the aforementioned facts, one must also understand that the
Earth's crust is not element scarce per se (Kesler, 2010). Rather it is the con-
centrated mineral deposits, exploitable from both an economic and environmental
perspective, that are scarce. Such deposits only constitute about 0.001% of the
crustal mass (Sec. 10.3.3). Subsequently, material scarcity should not be contem-
plated solely from a Malthusian perspective but rather it should be linked to the
law of diminishing returns. The best quality ore grades and those closest to the
surface, the low hanging fruits, so to speak, have already been cherry picked leaving
behind only the sub-optimal ones. Ever increasing use of powerful machinery has
however enabled ever lower quality grades to become commercially viable, or even
physically obtainable. There is no reason to doubt that future technology will not
continue to push boundaries and as Kooroshy et al. (2009) comment: “a century
of developing increasingly high-powered and automated earth-moving technology
has resulted in a 90-fold increase of the rate at which industry can displace solid
rock formations”. Thus any problem will, as in the past, revolve around energy
availability for the exploitation of ever decreasing ore grades. This will entail more
energy intensive beneficiation and metallurgical operations. The energy needed to
transport minerals will also play an important role as extraction steadily occurs in
ever more remote corners of the globe. At the same time new developments within
the mining sector will entail a consumption of high-tech materials which in turn
carry their own energy costs.
So geological scarcity does not truly exist although there has been at certain
points over the last 120 years key supply issues for some commodities.The question
now therefore is whether from a supply point of view, geological availability should
or should not concern society.
Yes it should because if the entire periodic table is used, each element could
constitute a practically independent supply issue which is likely to accentuate into
the future. Also, as thoroughly explained in this topic, the Second Law holds that
any process beginning with the extraction of a concentrated mineral resource and
ending in its dispersal is irreversible. Accordingly, reverting this process on a global
1 See for calculations, http : ==en:wikipedia:org=wiki=Doubling_time. Accessed Sept. 2013.