Mining Of Minerals And The Limits To Growth

Steve Keen

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A patron just alerted me to this video by an Finland-based Associate Professor of Mineral Processing, Simon Michaux (he's obviously an Australian from his accent). He makes the point that minerals have been declining in availability and quantity pretty much as predicted by the "Standard Run" of the Limits to Growth Report from 1972.

He also emphasises that mineral production and energy use are linked at the hip--and that energy use rises as mineral quality declines--so that an industrial future based on fossil fuels is impossible, while the future envisioned by a transition to renewable energy is also flawed.

I highly recommend watching the video, and reading the attached report. Here's part of the abstract:

It becomes highly relevant then to examine how mining ecosystem interacts with the energy ecosystem. The IMF Metals Index and the Crude Oil Price Index correlates strongly. This suggests that the mining industrial operations to meet metal demand for the future are unlikely to go as planned.

The implications are that the basic prediction of the original Limits to Growth systems study (Meadows et al 1972) was conceptually correct. Just so, it should be considered that the industrial ecosystem and the society it supports may soon contract in size. This implies that the current Linear Economy system is seriously unbalanced and is not remotely sustainable. The Limits to Growth conclusions suggest at some point, the global society and the global industrial ecosystem that support it will radically change form.

It is clear that society consumes more mineral resources each year. It is also clear that society does not really understand its dependency on minerals to function. Availability of minerals could be an issue in the future, where it becomes too expensive to extract metals due to decreasing grade.

This report proposes that the fundamental transformation of the global ecosystem predicted by the original Limits to Growth study, has been in progress since 2005, for the last 16 years. The industrial ecosystem is in the process of transitioning from growth based economics to contraction based economics. This will affect all sectors of the global ecosystem, all at the same time (in a 20 year window). We are there now and should respond accordingly.

Source: YouTube.