THURSDAY, SEPT 2, 2021: NOTE TO FILE
The Mining of Minerals and the Limits to Growth
There really are limits
Eric Lee, A-SOCIATED PRESS
TOPICS: MINING LIMITS, FROM THE WIRES, ECONOMY 'NOT REMOTELY SUSTAINABLE'
Abstract: This is the abstract to a report, another scientist's warning, on the current state of our economy and society, both of which are subsystems of the geobiosphere we depend on, aka the planetary life-support system we are collapsing.
COOS BAY (A-P) — The Mining of Minerals and the Limits to Growth by Simon P Michaux, March 2021.
Abstract [comments added]:
Current industrialization [global Modern Techno-industrial (MTI) society] has a foundation in the continuous supply of natural resources. The methods and processes associated with this foundation have significant momentum. This paradigm will not be undone easily. Human nature and human history make it so. Currently, our industrial systems are absolutely dependent on non-renewable natural resources for energy sources.
For the last 15 years, it has been apparent that the industrial business environment has been more challenging and volatile. This report will present the thesis that this persistent volatility is the forerunner of temporal markers that show the industrial ecosystem is in the process of radically changing.
Current thinking is that European industrial businesses will replace a complex industrial ecosystem that took more than a century to build. This [MTI] system was built with the support of the highest calorifically dense source of energy the world has ever known (oil), in cheap abundant quantities, with easily available credit, and unlimited mineral resources. This task is hoped to be done at a time when there is comparatively very expensive energy, a fragile finance system saturated in debt, not enough minerals, and an unprecedented number of human populations, embedded in a deteriorating environment.
It is apparent that the goal of industrial scale transition away from fossil fuels into non-fossil fuel systems is a much larger task than current thinking allows for [i.e. is not possible]. To achieve this objective, among other things, an unprecedented demand for minerals will be required. Most minerals required for the renewable energy transition have not been mined in bulk quantities before. Many of the technology metals already have primary resource mining supply risks.
At its foundation, the current industrial ecosystem was and still is based around the consumption of natural resources, which were considered to be infinite [by NC economists, political leaders, planners, and 99+% of the public]. The very idea that there might be system based limits to the global extraction of resources is considered foolish by the current economic market. The volume of manufacture was influenced by the consumption demand of products. Growth and expansion with no considered limits of any kind was the underlying paradigm.
The majority of infrastructure and technology units needed to phase out fossil fuels has yet to be manufactured. Recycling cannot be done on products that have yet to be manufactured. In the current system, demand for metals of all kinds have been increasing, just as the grade of ores processed has been decreasing.
Global reserves are not large enough to supply enough metals to build the renewable non-fossil fuels industrial system or satisfy long term demand in the current system. Mineral deposit discovery has been declining for many metals. The grade of processed ore for many of the industrial metals has been decreasing over time, resulting in declining mineral processing yield. This has the implication of the increase in mining energy consumption per unit of metal.
Mining of minerals is intimately dependent on fossil fuel based energy supply. Like all other industrial activities, without energy, mining does not happen. A case can be made that the window of viability for the fossil fuel energy supply ecosystem has been closing for 5 to 10 years. 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 [e.g. collapse].
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 [and energy] to function. Availability of minerals could be an issue in the future, where it becomes too expensive to extract metals due to decreasing grade [and EROI].
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 [to what was foreseen fifty years ago].
If the Limits to Growth study is truly a good model for predicting the industrial ecosystem, then the current industrial practice is inappropriate. The continued development of the economic growth paradigm would become increasingly ineffective, and a waste of valuable resources. All such efforts would be pushing in the wrong direction with poor results.
The rules of industrialization and the sourcing of raw materials are changing into a new era of business [non-BAU] model. Change is happening, whether we are ready for it or not.
A possible response to these structural changes is presented after conclusions on page 52, where it was recommended that a new resource management system should be developed after genuinely understanding the net position of long term minerals supply [possible only via a non-existent global system of Blue Planet Governance]. Also, it was recommended that new mining frontiers be opened, but the minerals extracted should be used differently [or rather not used to seek out the condition now that will come anyway].
The Mining of Minerals and the Limits to Growth by Simon P Michaux, March 2021
CONCLUSIONS
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. The recycling industry is still in its infancy and is only just gaining momentum. Even when fully developed, industrial recycling cannot facilitate the transformation of the industrial ecosystem as a single solution. The mining of minerals is not only necessary in parallel to a fully developed recycling network but will be needed at an unprecedented volume to supply the construction of the post fossil fuel industrial system. Availability of minerals could [will] be an issue in the future [as it is now], where it becomes too expensive [energetically prohibited] to extract metals due to decreasing grade. Discovery of new deposits is also decreasing....
"The recycling industry is still in its infancy and is only just gaining momentum." Oh, but we can't recycle energy. To 'fully' recycle everything we MTI ones depend on, would require vastly more energy than we are currently using in all forms. Sorry about that. All mining is for a time, with few exceptions, e.g. mining seawater for salt via solar evaporation is sustainable. The salt mined eventually ends up back in the ocean.
POSSIBLE RESPONSE TO THE CHALLENGE
To transition away from fossil fuels, unprecedented volumes of minerals (battery minerals in particular) will be needed. Demand for such minerals will spike all over the world, making them much more valuable. The existing approach to do this, which has served us well over the previous 200 years, is going to become increasingly ineffective. At a fundamental level, without a cheap abundant energy source, extracting mineral resources will become increasingly expensive and as time passes, will become harder to prevent decreased production rates. For the industrial ecosystem to return to how it operated when the Internal Combustion Engine technology supported infrastructure was constructed, a method to develop the production of refined petroleum at a sale price of less than $20 USD a barrel (Michaux 2019). As the quality of oil reserves have been declining for some time, this is highly unlikely [an Olympus Mons sized understatement] to happen....
'To transition away from fossil fuels, unprecedented volumes of minerals (battery minerals in particular) will be needed.' Oh, but it is we MTI (Modern Techno-industrial) ones who say 'we need...'.
We don't even know our needs from our wants. We want MTI culture (and our cars) to keep on keeping on for the milk and cheese and profit (and speed) it brings, but it can't. Only we MTI ones think we need it to, and we will keep on thinking so, for a time, until we can't (or some become non-MTI ones).
The nature of things says we're not going to get evermore energy or minerals/materials. Sorry about that; no one gets a vote. What we need to do is 'seek out the condition now that will come anyway, but by our service be our biosphere's handmaiden anew.' —Howard T. Odum, Energy, Ecology, & Economics, 1973. We will not transition to another form of MTI society made up of the 'good' bits (as Ruben Nelson notes). Life as we know it will end, and sooner is better from the POV of all other lifeforms on the planet (except some pets/livestock, and assuming we don't do a global nuclear conflagration thing) and from the POV of some humans who can envision living in a sane and sapient global society of maybe 7 to 35 million handmaidens (unthinkable to all MTIed ones). Is there any political pathway to get there? No. Full STOP! Your only quasi-political solution is to vote with your feet to become, among other things, apolitical animals (anew).
Evidence-based thinking about our problematique is a challenge some scientists/historians may be up to. Thinking about what to do about it and how to do it, i.e. real solutions that might actually work, presents different challenges to the hominid brain. Those who live in complex societies (that select for hierarchy, from chiefdoms to state level empires) are the political and religious animals our pre-agrarian ancestors were not. In modern society we are mostly politicized. About 96 percent of scientists self-identify as being mainstream political animals (52% of scientists self-describe as liberal with 14% very liberal, 35% moderate, and 9% as conservative) and the 4% include those on the far edge of the political spectrum and maybe a few, <1%?, who are apolitical. Add religious indoctrination, being more a hit and miss atavism, e.g. Francis Collins. Most scientists are political if not religious animals. We MTI ones have a belief-based-ways-of-pretend-knowing problem thanks to our educational (schooling) system (formal and informal).
If viable solutions involve violating deeply held political and/or religious verities, our primate tribal minds falter, are unable to consider viable solutions. Science minimizes (imperfectly selects against) political and religious or other belief-based ways of knowing to better endeavor to find things out, to listen to Nature who doesn't care what true believers believe. Modern science serves modern techno-industrial society and focuses on over-specialization, over-focusing in one area of expertise/problem solving, all the better to serve (get paid).
Scientists who seek a view through the macroscope of systems thinking tend to do so as an idiosyncratic aside. In recent centuries science became credible/valued and pseudo-science arose. Systems science has progressed to the point that assorted concept mongers/academics are adopting its terms/ideas and claiming the status of being systems thinkers. Some humans (a fraction of a percent) would rather know than believe. Pseudo-whatever types would rather believe than know. The merely eloquent are paid (by the believers or those who want to spread their beliefs) to tell the others what to believe, e.g. sustainable development/sustainability studies such as missives from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.
What those who would rather know have to say about what they see is typically dissonant for all, including themselves, but when the question, 'so what are we supposed to do now that we know all this?' comes up, they may have no better idea than anyone else, e.g. Nate Hagens, William Rees, Ugo Bardi, Alice Friedman, Robert Costanza, Paul Chefurka, Gail Tverberg, Jeremy Lent, Mary Odum, Tad Patzek, Rex Weyler, George Mobus, Eileen Crist, Rupert Read, Haydn Washington, Reg Morrison, Megan Seibert, Ted Trainer, Rob Mielcarski, the David Suzuki Foundation, MAHB....
Indeed, most would-be Cassandras, the few, do tell what their best guess is, i.e. they do tell the truth to power (politicians, policy makers, CEOs, the public) and feel their job is done (e.g. John Holdren who has been speaking science to power for 50 years, meanwhile...). That the leaders need to figure it out is the consensus narrative. Oh, but..., what if no one is actually running the show? Chairman Xi runs the show in China, his leadership is why China's economy has grown so fast, right? We the People rule in democracies, as everyone knows, we made America great. That someone is pulling the strings that make everything happen (and so they can pull different ones to grow the economy or end poverty (SDG#1) or eliminate systemic racism... if they but would), is a verity we all took in with our mother's milk. If the leaders don't save the world (and they were all told by great scientists what the problematique is in great detail), then if they fail to do their job, to come up with real solutions, we'll know who to blame. Or maybe I've met the enemy and he is I.
In our monetary culture, doing a save-the-world thing is above everyone's pay grade. Those who are clueless with respect to our problematique (e.g. politicians, media, the public, etc.) are perhaps unlikely to envision a resolutique/solutionatique that actually might work (as Nature alone 'decides' what works). Meanwhile, the pace of planetary destruction will not slow until it must (via negative feedback loops). As Emerson noted, 'things are in the saddle and ride mankind'. Could foresight intelligence be in the saddle? I don't know.
As H.G. Wells noted in 1920, we may be in a race between education and catastrophe. He called for a world revolution to make possible a new world order enabled by a 'New Education' system 'based on a swiftly expanding science of relationship' (i.e. systems science) that foundationally replaced Old Education, the old paradigm that we are all products of, that needs to be rendered obsolete. 'In order to change an existing paradigm you do not struggle to try and change the problematic model. You create a new model and make the old one obsolete. That, in essence, is the higher service to which we are all being called.' —R. Buckminster Fuller.
In short, we lost the race about a century ago, but the Old Education system Wells hoped to replace, that traffics in error, ignorance, and illusion (belief-based ways of pretend knowing, e.g. conventional economics, the humanities), didn't tell you we lost the race because all believe we didn't. Meanwhile, 'the pace of planetary destruction has not slowed'. For a world revolution, consider replacing the schooling system with an ecolate education system based on a logical language: e.g. semantography, that all native language speakers learn as children.
Some who would rather know than believe write books and otherwise attempt to share information (vetted, evidence-based as distinct from politicized narratives wrapped in misinformation and disinformation). But unlike their counterparts a hundred years ago, none are revolutionaries working on a theory of world revolution based on a New Education system. Revolutionary change is above the pay grade of today's academics, scientists, and thought leaders who at best seek to inform. They fail to realize that only those having some grasp of our problematique can maybe come up with a viable resolutique/solutionatique that might actually work, which excludes virtually all politicians, CEOs, academics, media pundits, religious leaders, policy makers, thought leaders and We the People who keep on keeping on.
To let go of one's belief in belief, of prescribed roles, of the illusion that revolutionary change is someone else's job, leads to the choiceless awareness of the abelieving mind, to change of a revolutionary nature. Too few will yet admit that they have met the enemy of the planetary life-support system, and he/she is me, myself, and I of the believing mind. When that is seen, however, when the choiceless endeavors of the abelieving mind (that would rather iterate towards knowing) is all that remains, then the problematic model gives way to the new paradigm, and the needed memetic change comes.
If enough stand down from their hubris heights to know humilitas, to listen (without picking and choosing), they will have to vote with their feet. They will choicelessly auto-organize, compelled by evidence and best-guess then test iteration, to create a new world order. Or not. If an anti-modern-techo-industrial memetic revolution fails, no viable ecolate civilization will follow. We are playing a high-stakes endgame (badly). We may lose. Nature is unkind. Foresight intelligence is not in the saddle. Our schooling interfered of our education. Sorry about that, posterity.
