Lecture Notes Oct. 16
This is the last material on the mid-term exam. We will not get to solid wastes and toxic wastes until after the exam.
Mineral resources can
be considered “stock” rather than renewable, but the amount available and the
amount used in the future are still wrapped in serious uncertainties that make
predictions about their depletion (whether dire or not) less than reliable.
AndI started lecture by reminding you of the dire predictions of resource
depletion that were common on the first Earth Day, in 1970. Even then several analysts were skeptical of
rapid depletion claims. They pointed out, as does Harper and me (in class) that there is real debate over
hat we have and how fast we are (or will in the future) use it.
There are several
subtleties to be considered here.
·
First, “Reserves” means different things. The
text uses this definition: “mineral sources currently identified and profitable
or at least minimally profitable to extract with existing technologies.”
·
Resources are “reserves” plus: (1) known mineral sources that are “sub-economic”
(not profitable to extract with current technology), and “hypothetical”
sources, based on expert opinion and extrapolation of geological knowledge of
known and potential minerals around the world. Simply put, we have not yet
looked everywhere, and we cannot easily estimate the economic or social
constraints on development of resource snot currently extracted. For example,
enhanced recovery technologies might let us get more copper, say, out of
exiting ore bodies in Utah than we can at the present. But, we may also find it
difficult socially or politically to get more copper out of Utah (say if nearby
residents protect expanding of a mine, or say out of the Peru or any other
country with known deposits.
Next, it is difficult
to project future demand. Harper in table 3.2 offers estimated lifetimes of
mineral reserves (depletion rates) based on current rates of use and rates in
2030 assuming that a global population of 10 billion consumes at the rate of
the U.S. today. This is an extreme scenario, and unlikely. Among the
uncertainties:
How big a human
population will there be in the future?
·
How much will they
consume (e.g., at what rate, which depends on their affluence; can everyone
achieve consumption rates of the current, middle-class industrial nation
citizen?).
·
What technologies
might make consumption more or less efficient?
·
Might increasing
price cause substitutes, conservation, and recycling to kick in somewhere down
the depletion curve?
The mineral resource production and use cycle:
Source to Sink (fig. 3.1)
The process diagram is
pretty simple and self-explanatory, so let’s focus again on problems and
uncertainties. Key problems mentioned in the text are:
·
Externalities: the cost of production and ultimate
disposal may not be fully reflected in market costs and prices. There may be
significant externalities if, for example, the public is left to clean up after
a mining company finishes use of an ore body. The example I used in class is
Summitville gold mine near Alamosa, CO. developed by the transnational firm
that went bankrupt and left the clean-up to government. In this case the costs
are paid by state and federal government, some from a fund extracted from
companies (“Super Fund”) and some from general tax revenues (our tax dollars).
·
Geo-political uncertainties: Some mineral resources may
become less or more accessible due to geo-political changes. Harper notes that most industrial countries
are not self-sufficient in many key mineral resources (e.g., they must import
them, from less developed countries) and thus their supply is subject to
geo-political changes and tensions.
·
Problems of the “extractive economies”: one of the
political-economic issues harks back to our discussion of globalization. World Systems and Dependency theory both
would posit that industrial countries have a vested interest in maintaining
access to cheap mineral extraction from developing countries. But suppliers of raw materials (in almost
all types, from the minerals we are discussing now to agricultural products,
though maybe not most energy resources) find themselves receiving less and less
return per unit of extracted resource. The “value added” and larger economic
returns come not from producing the raw resource, but from processing it into
industrial and consumer products and selling those products. This problem of
“extractive economies” even applies to some areas of the US which produce raw
resources, like the mining areas of the Rockies or the agricultural regions of
the Great Plains—they receive only limited economic returns compared to
processors further up the chain of production and consumption, and thus suffer
depressed economies.