The Challenge of Resource Depletion - Thanatia: The Destiny of the Earth's Mineral Resources - page 465

manual and hence society generally ignores as to how to repair damage. Should it
emerge, any form of compensation is given to communities or individual people not
to Nature, which is seemingly always expected to repair herself.
Man has learnt throughout history how Nature behaves and how “she” can be
manipulated. Many forces have been mastered but others still remain untamed. In
any case society may always struggle to protect itself from extreme weather and the
consequences it causes such as floods and droughts. It is less likely to be able to
dictate volcanoes and earthquakes. Yet, it is a matter of knowledge and technology.
That said, towards the middle of the last century the technological learning curve
of the Man-Nature interaction approached a more stable state. This in turn yielded
societal satisfaction and optimism which then progressively promoted further ex-
traction and the unquenchable desire for more and more resources. It represented
a period of somewhat blind trust as to the power of technology. For Man, for the
most part, remained oblivious to depredating forces, thought to be “minor” or at
least not so evident.
However, in contrast to the technological learning curve that increases slowly and
progressively stabilises before falling, the degradation curve climbs exponentially.
At the beginning, growth is inappreciable but the energy needed to maintain it
rapidly duplicates. Furthermore, if most of this energy is obtained from the crust
and hydrosphere, rather than from the sun, the curve becomes doubly exponential
and disruptions and catastrophes may suddenly accumulate. The degradation curve
is therefore rapidly winning the race. The world's climate is changing irreversibly;
air, rivers and oceans are being gradually more polluted; forests disappearing in only
the course of decades; mining is all the more evasive, deeper, remote and resource
intensive.
Of all international bodies, it is the International Panel for Climate Change 10
(IPCC) which has undertaken the greatest effort in the assessment of scientific, tech-
nical and socio-economic information, with which to build a quantitative picture of
that devastation, focusing on human-induced climate change. Its reports system-
atically analyse impacts on the atmosphere, the Earth's surface, the ocean and
the cryosphere. It analyses the pathways for mitigating global warming by study-
ing production, consumption and trade patterns. Additionally, the IPCC performs
projections on energy systems, transport, buildings and human settlements, indus-
try and agriculture and leads the call for sustainability. The IPCC thus strongly
advocates the intensive use of renewable energies combined with sustainable con-
sumption.
Yet, in centering its attention only on the causes, effects, forecasts and policies
relating to climate change, the issues associated with mineral exploitation are either
ignored or only looked at on face value 11 . The use and management of mineral
10 See http : ==www:ipcc:ch=. Accessed Jan. 2014.
11 In fact, as demonstrated by the authors in Valero and Valero D. (2011), the IPCC's emission
scenarios in its Third Assessment Report imply that the assumed amount of conventional fuel
resources are up to twice as much the current available ones, what is very unlikely even if more