There Is More to It than Oil

The end of our industrial lifestyle paradigm will be dictated by Liebig’s Law, and by humanity’s response to its consequences. Unfortunately, it is impossible to know at this point which increasingly scarce nonrenewable natural resource (NNR) or NNR combination will ultimately prove to be industrialized humanity’s limiting factor.

Consequently, humanity’s global societal collapse may be triggered by scarcity associated with one or more NNRs other than those commonly considered “most critical” to the perpetuation of our industrial lifestyle paradigm—fossil fuels, or oil specifically. After all, the space shuttle Challenger disaster was caused by a faulty o-ring.

NNR Scarcity

Many analysts of nonrenewable natural resource (NNR) scarcity focus on fossil fuels specifically, or on oil exclusively. From their perspective, energy—or “liquid energy” (oil)—is the primary or sole enabler of our industrial lifestyle paradigm; and energy scarcity is the greatest imminent threat to our industrialized way of life.

Totally overlooked or given only passing mention by these analysts are the metals and nonmetallic minerals that serve as the building blocks for the infrastructure, machinery, tools, and products that enable our industrialized way of life. If fact, of the 89 NNRs that enable our industrial lifestyle paradigm, 86 are metals and nonmetallic minerals; 3 are fossil fuels.

While the criticality associated with the 89 NNRs varies, each plays an important role in enabling the lifestyles to which we in the industrialized West feel entitled, to which billions in industrializing nations aspire, and to which scarcity associated metals and nonmetallic minerals, especially in combination, will be equally as disruptive as will scarcity associated with fossil fuels.

Metal and Nonmetallic Mineral Scarcity

Such disruptions became painfully evident at the inception of our Great Recession in 2008, by which time 59 of the 86 metals and nonmetallic minerals that enable our industrial lifestyle paradigm had become scarce globally.

(An NNR was considered scarce globally in 2008 in the event that globally available NNR supplies between the years 2000 and 2008 were insufficient to prevent an inflation adjusted NNR price level increase during the 2000-2008 period. In such cases, the 2008 globally available, economically viable NNR supply was insufficient to completely address the 2008 global NNR requirement.)

Among the globally scarce metals and minerals in 2008:

Selected Globally Scarce Nonmetallic Minerals

By the middle of the first decade of the new millennium, metal and nonmetallic mineral producers were finding it increasingly difficult to bring online sufficient economically viable supplies to completely address global requirements—despite the fact that the price levels associated with the vast majority of metals and nonmetallic minerals trended upward since the year 2000 or before.

By 2008, the earth could no longer keep pace with ever-increasing global metal and nonmetallic mineral requirements. Sufficient quantities could not be physically extracted from the earth in a timely and cost-effective manner to perpetuate global pre-recession economic output (GDP) levels and growth trajectories—the vast majority of metals and minerals, in addition to the three fossil fuels, had become scarce globally.

The Great Recession—which should be understood more broadly as an ecological phenomenon rather than simply as an economic phenomenon—ensued.

The Total NNR Scarcity Story

It could be argued that in the absence of sufficient fossil fuels, the earth’s metals and nonmetallic minerals could not be used to enable our industrial lifestyle paradigm. It could just as easily be argued that in the absence of sufficient metals and nonmetallic minerals, the earth’s fossil fuels would be equally as useless in enabling our industrialized way of life.

The point is that all NNRs are important; and while coal, natural gas, and oil are certainly indispensible to the perpetuation of our industrial lifestyle paradigm, all NNRs must be taken into account when considering humanity’s future.

Consider that even if we are somehow able to solve our “liquid fuels problem”, or more broadly, our “energy problem”, we will not resolve humanity’s predicament—i.e., our industrial lifestyle paradigm is unsustainable. Most metals and nonmetallic minerals will become increasingly scarce going forward, thereby undermining our industrial lifestyle paradigm within the next few decades—even if energy is unlimited and free.

And ironically, because many of the metals and nonmetallic minerals that are critical elements of our prospective “alternative energy solutions” are scarce as well—see the following table—it is almost inconceivable that sufficient economically viable supplies of these metals and nonmetallic minerals will remain available to solve our energy problem.

Globally Scarce Metals and Nonmetallic Minerals in 2008

Note that the fossil fuels were scarce globally in 2008 as well!

Global Fossil Fuel Scarcity in 2008

Energy is certainly an essential enabler of humanity’s industrial lifestyle paradigm; and fossil fuels are certainly humanity’s major sources of primary energy. But fossil fuels are only part of the NNR scarcity story, and focusing on fossil fuel scarcity or oil scarcity to the exclusion of metal and nonmetallic mineral scarcity is myopic at best and tragically misguided at worst.