Another look at non-renewable resource exhaustion

摘要: This paper challenges the widely held hypothesis, considered in some circles as accepted scientific consensus, that modern industrial society is rapidly exhausting non-renewable resources. We argue this paradigm amiss and use copper availability an example to demonstrate problems with consensus. In 80 years for which reasonably reliable estimates of reserves reserve life are available, there no evidence resource exhaustion. addition, analysis economics exploration indicates mining companies will treat inventory control problem trade off using limited capital resources between expanding inventories generating current revenue through production. case industry, it argued little incentive major producers explore more Non-producers, do have reserves, but does not change conclusion new effectively worth looking for. also conjecture that, except rare temporary circumstances, applicable many Ultimately, implies aggregate reserve-life calculations all types inherently flawed.