Ocean Floors and Space are New Virgin Grounds for Tapping Unlimited Resources.

For two and a half centuries, it has been widely accepted as evidence that men could endlessly exploit the resources given by their natural habitats while their civilizations would keep progressing on a technical point of view and their societies would be endlessly getting more and more affluent. In this early and rising 21^st Century, forecasting the consequences makes no doubts:  we'll soon face a shortage of goods. Our Planet Earth will not be able to provide enough materials and energy for the sky-rocketing needs of our post-industrial countries and newly industrialized nations. Western societies are used to consume as much as the Earth could offer.  Obviously, it would not be reasonable for emergent economic powers adopt the past development models, capitalistic, socialist or other, based on waste and on the idea of unlimited growth, which have lead worldwide ecologic disasters! It's still time  to find solutions for post-industrial countries and help preventing new wealthy ones from over-consuming  Now, rising industrial giants, like the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) and sub-continental groups of nations — such as the Asian Dragons (Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia), the UAE (United Arab Emirates) and also the modernized Mediterranean states of the EU aka "PIGS" (Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain), — has joined the "club" of main actors for the growth of the production of  manufactured goods and the consumption of natural resources.

In agriculture, men's yearly consumption is now higher than the capacity of Earth to yield the same amount of vegetal foods. Wild animal species could not reproduce enough to feed us. We totally depend on domestic animals, raised for their milk and meat. We have to create sea farms for our needs in fish.

Concerning the mining industry, for our current use of metallic and non-metallic resources, the total remaining reserves would allow only few decades of production, even if we take into consideration:

-          Further discoveries,

-          Higher recycling capabilities.

We applied optimistic hypotheses on data provided Armin RELLER (University of Augsburg) and Tom GRAEDEL (Yale University):

ARR = [(Est_max + Est_min)*(1+R_ND)*(1+R_RC)]/2

Where,

ARR: Average Remaining Reserves

Est_max : Maximum Estimate

Est_min : Minimum Estimate

R_ND: Ratio of New Discoveries

R_RC: Ratio of Recycling Capabilities

 The results for 16 ores show that, apart from aluminum, there will be shortage of most components within two centuries from now.

Figure: Remaining resources (optimistic hypotheses)

Even considering that exploration techniques and evaluation methods are getting more accurate by using computer systems for the estimation of ores reserves, the balance ratio between yearly consumption and global extractable resources, shows that we'll lack of most of resources before the end of this century…

What are the alternative solutions?

Apart from decreasing most of our economic activities — then, why not turning back to archaic ways of life? — The only possible issues are to seek for sources of energy and resources not yet exploited.

For our needs in energy and power, the first solution is to develop "Greenergy" (green energy), such as solar energy, wind farms and "tidenergy" (tide energy), etc.

Now, the main technological difficulties have been solved and the industrialization cost of Greenergy is low enough to allow mass production. The current objective for their deployment in the near future, is the ratio of Greenergy vs. nuclear and carbon energies produced. Greenergy must not be anymore considered as mere complementary energetic sources. However, by continuously providing more power to our greedy societies the Earth ecologic balance will continue to dramatically deteriorate.  

Because Greenergy is not at all but a Zero-Carbon Trace solution! They will contribute over-heating our planet! But this is another topic…

Moreover, "Bionergy" (bio energy) has already started to replace tapping fossil energy by refining plants — sugar cane, corn, sugar radish, cereals, etc. — cropped on massively cultivated lands, at the detriment of nutritional agriculture. This situation has already leaded the world to multiple socio-ecological problems, especially in the poorest countries, by accentuating hunger among the lowest classes of their populations.

As a substitution for the mining industry, clearly, man will have to tap ores in virgin grounds. Clearly, only two areas are offered to him: the oceans floors and space…

Further readings:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mineral_resource_classification

http://www.cim.org/committees/estimation2003.pdf

http://www.newscientist.com/articleimages/mg19426051.200/2-earths-natural-wealth-an-audit.html