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(Ryan Whitwam is a freelance tech writer and a former research scientist.”5 Reasons Space Exploration Is More Important Than Ever.” Extreme Tech. July 29th 2022. https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/268062-5-reasons-space-exploration-is-more-important-than-ever.)

Year by year, humanity's situation on Earth becomes more precarious. With , economic insecurity, and  stressing the world's resources, why spend all this money on space? It's easy to see why this argument comes up: there are big problems to solve here on Earth, and going to space is expensive. This oversimplification ignores the nature of humanity, the drive that has made us the dominant species on Earth. If we want to stay that way, space exploration is vital. Here are five reasons why we belong up there.

(Dirk Schulze-Makuch received his Ph.D. in geosciences at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Afterwards he took up a fellowship at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, worked as Assistant Professor at the University of Texas at El Paso, and later as Associate and Full Professor at Washington State University. Humanity’s long-term survival requires space colonization. Big Think. May 23, 2023. https://bigthink.com/hard-science/humanity-survival-space-colonization/)//PWD

Colonization of one group of people by another has been a constant theme in human history. Europeans took the practice to a truly global level in the 19th century, imposing their culture and rules on much of the rest of the world, and giving colonization a bad rap in the process. 

Improving worldwide food production and food security is a major challenge, especially in light of climate change and for lower income countries where agriculture is a key source of livelihood. In the Global South for example, the agricultural sector accounts for up to 30 per cent of gross domestic product and 60 per cent of employment.

Simon Fraser University (SFU) Economics Professor Fernando Aragón conducts research in the fields of developmental, environmental and political economics. His work explores the role of natural resources and institutions on local development, the economic effects of pollution and adaptation to climate change. He is especially interested in the way these factors affect rural households in the Global South.

The economic growth numbers have come in for the first quarter of this year, and they’re dismal. In the United States’ highly regulated economy, we’ve come to expect low growth rates. But negative growth is especially bad, occurring only during terrible economic conditions. And yet, degrowth is precisely what the US economy did in the first three months of 2022.

According to a, inflation-adjusted gross domestic product (GDP) declined 0.4 percent in this year’s first quarter, which is an annualized decline of 1.4 percent. That contraction makes Q1 of 2022 the weakest quarter for GDP growth since the pandemic-related recession of 2020.

The global scope of American military power has been described in many ways: hegemony, primacy, and unipolarity. Brooks, Ikenberry, and Wohlforth (2012)1 cover the nuances of the terminology well, and I agree with their preference for the term “Deep Engagement” that Joseph Nye coined in a 1995 article.2 The complex patterns and nuances of engagement remain poorly understood, with a focus on conflict that ignores the preponderance of cases, where U.S. forces have been peacefully based for decades. In short, foreign policy has focused on the heat instead of the light – countless studies, essays, and books on Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq stand in contrast to the negligible attention given to countries where the U.S. maintained large-scale and long-term troop basing such as Belgium, Korea, Turkey, and Kuwait.

Is the United States an empire? We may just as well debate whether an elephant most closely resembles a Tyrannosaurus Rex or Triceratops. Some will point to the imperial characteristics that are reflected in the United States force posture. But characteristics of dinosaurs or empires (size, martial strength, breadth) really have no meaning in a world where that entire order is extinct. The 21st century is filled with a new order of nation-states, markedly different from eras prior to 1945.

Our efforts to help restore the technological prowess of the U.S. military started six years ago in a Pentagon conference room. One of us, a former executive and tech innovator in Silicon Valley, was then serving as the head of the Defense Innovation Board, created to match the needs of the Department of Defense with America’s most advanced technologies. The other was the deputy secretary of defense, reworking the U.S. military’s strategy for the growing competition among the world’s great powers. Though we’d never met before, we quickly realized we had reached the same conclusion: In failing to adapt to the changing character of warfare and great-power competition, America risked setting itself up for a catastrophic defeat.

Our subsequent work together, including at the Special Competitive Studies Project, has confirmed our initial fears. Thanks to a new generation of disruptive technologies and intensifying global rivalries, the likelihood of war between the world’s great powers—and the devastation such a war could wreak—will increase significantly this decade. The best way to deter such a war is for the U.S. military to restore its technological superiority over potential adversaries. We’ve spent the past year designing a strategy that we believe will enable us to do just that. Our window of opportunity is quickly closing.

Based on the panel data from 2008 to 2020, this paper uses the multi-period difference in differences method to empirically test the impact of the implementation of smart city policies on the urban green economy. The research results show that the implementation of smart city policies has promoted the development of urban green economy from two aspects: First of all, in terms of environmental protection, the implementation of the smart city policy has reduced the discharge of industrial SO2 pollutants in central and northeastern regions; secondly, in terms of energy conservation, the implementation of this policy has particularly reduced power consumption per unit of GDP in east and west regions. The paper further verifies the robustness of the results using a series of tests such as PSD-DID, lagged one period, expanded sample size and placebo test. Moreover, the endogeneity problem is effectively solved by the instrumental variable method. Further explore the impact mechanism of smart city policies to promote green economy, and found that smart cities can promote green economic growth through technological activities and government public expenditure. In addition, the multi-period nature of smart cities allows the accumulation of construction experience and the construction effect will become better and better. Based on the research results of this paper, the following policy recommendations are proposed: 1. To further expand the scope of smart city pilots, and the construction of smart cities should be differentiated based on the basic conditions and actual conditions of the city or region (Ning et al., 2020). In addition, return visits to cities and regions that have been established as smart city pilots are conducted to ensure the continuity and stability of the implementation of smart city policies, in order to establish a stable and long-term mechanism for environmental friendliness, energy conservation and emission reduction, and to promote green economic development. 2. The empirical results of this paper show that the progress of technology is one of the influencing mechanisms to promote the development of green economy. Therefore, the government needs to include low-carbon science and technology as an important component of the national strategic science and technology force. Increasing R&D investment in energy conservation and emission reduction, promoting the proliferation of energy conservation and emission reduction technologies are necessary for the development of green economy. 3. The government should not only increase support for enterprises to invest in low-carbon emission reduction and improve their green innovation capacity, but also subsidize green enterprises, using financial and administrative measures to reduce the cost of developing low-carbon technologies and resources and to promote the development of a low-carbon green economy. The implementation of smart city policies is important to enhance the sustainability of cities, not only to provide the necessary guarantee for green economic development, but also to promote the achievement of the “carbon emission peaking” goal in terms of reducing pollutant emissions and fossil energy consumption. Although the text focuses on the impact of the implementation of smart city policies on the development of green economy in cities, in fact, the construction of smart cities also has an important impact on the energy structure and carbon emission structure, which plays an important role in the long-term development of green economy and “carbon neutrality” of cities, and this will also be one of the future research directions.

Based on the panel data from 2008 to 2020, this paper uses the multi-period difference in differences method to empirically test the impact of the implementation of smart city policies on the urban green economy. The research results show that the implementation of smart city policies has promoted the development of urban green economy from two aspects: First of all, in terms of environmental protection, the implementation of the smart city policy has reduced the discharge of industrial SO2 pollutants in central and northeastern regions; secondly, in terms of energy conservation, the implementation of this policy has particularly reduced power consumption per unit of GDP in east and west regions. The paper further verifies the robustness of the results using a series of tests such as PSD-DID, lagged one period, expanded sample size and placebo test. Moreover, the endogeneity problem is effectively solved by the instrumental variable method. Further explore the impact mechanism of smart city policies to promote green economy, and found that smart cities can promote green economic growth through technological activities and government public expenditure. In addition, the multi-period nature of smart cities allows the accumulation of construction experience and the construction effect will become better and better. Based on the research results of this paper, the following policy recommendations are proposed: 1. To further expand the scope of smart city pilots, and the construction of smart cities should be differentiated based on the basic conditions and actual conditions of the city or region (Ning et al., 2020). In addition, return visits to cities and regions that have been established as smart city pilots are conducted to ensure the continuity and stability of the implementation of smart city policies, in order to establish a stable and long-term mechanism for environmental friendliness, energy conservation and emission reduction, and to promote green economic development. 2. The empirical results of this paper show that the progress of technology is one of the influencing mechanisms to promote the development of green economy. Therefore, the government needs to include low-carbon science and technology as an important component of the national strategic science and technology force. Increasing R&D investment in energy conservation and emission reduction, promoting the proliferation of energy conservation and emission reduction technologies are necessary for the development of green economy. 3. The government should not only increase support for enterprises to invest in low-carbon emission reduction and improve their green innovation capacity, but also subsidize green enterprises, using financial and administrative measures to reduce the cost of developing low-carbon technologies and resources and to promote the development of a low-carbon green economy. The implementation of smart city policies is important to enhance the sustainability of cities, not only to provide the necessary guarantee for green economic development, but also to promote the achievement of the “carbon emission peaking” goal in terms of reducing pollutant emissions and fossil energy consumption. Although the text focuses on the impact of the implementation of smart city policies on the development of green economy in cities, in fact, the construction of smart cities also has an important impact on the energy structure and carbon emission structure, which plays an important role in the long-term development of green economy and “carbon neutrality” of cities, and this will also be one of the future research directions.

The next economic crisis is closer than you think. But what you should really worry about is what comes after: in the current social, political, and technological landscape, a prolonged economic crisis, combined with rising income inequality, could well escalate into a major global military conflict.

The 2008-09 global financial crisis almost bankrupted governments and caused systemic collapse. Policymakers managed to pull the global economy back from the brink, using massive monetary stimulus, including quantitative easing and near-zero (or even negative) interest rates.

This approach views a bad economy as a driving force incentivizing political leaders to initiate diversionary conflict as a way of proving their ability to lead the country (e.g. Bennett & Nordstrom, 2000; Brule´, Marshall & Prins, 2010; Fordham, 1998; Heldt, 1999; Solt, 2011). Of course, the leaders could also gain support by rebooting the economy, but they often feel unable to do so. International conflict can yield two distinct benefits to domestically threatened leaders (Haynes, 2017). First, an external threat increases internal cohesion. Many studies of intergroup psychology have found that favorable attitudes toward in-group members become stronger when individuals perceive a more severe threat from (or competition with) out-group members. Thus, a conflict with a foreign state can help an incumbent leader maintain political control (Theiler, 2018). Second, when facing domestic concerns about political leadership, leaders can engage in military conflict to demonstrate their competence (Richards et al., 1993). If they meet public expectations or even achieve a glorious outcome, their popularity can be restored. The effects of economic conditions on international conflict have long been debated, at least since Ostrom & Job’s (1986) study of US presidents’ use of force. Based on statistical analyses in large-N studies, some scholars have argued that the diversionary theory of war is supported only by anecdotal evidence, and that there is no significant relationship between domestic unrest and international conflict (Leeds & Davis, 1997; Meernik & Waterman, 1996). Even if some historical cases are classified as diversionary conflicts, these scholars contend, we cannot generalize a causal theory from them. Indeed, few insist that domestic unrest is a sufficient condition for international conflict, though it may cause political leaders to contemplate conflict initiation. Some studies even argue that domestically troubled states tend to be targets, not initiators, of international conflicts due to their weakened capability and unwillingness to fight (Blainey, 1988; Clark, Fordham & Nordstrom, 2011; Foster, 2006). Thus, during the last four decades, studies of diversionary conflict have aimed to identify (1) the conditions under which such conflicts occur, (2) the types of domestic unrest that produce international conflict, and (3) alternative options to the diversionary use of force against foreign states, as discussed below. First, many studies have shed light on dyadic or domestic conditions that facilitate diversionary conflict. Domestically challenged leaders are prudent in choosing their diversionary targets so as to remain in office. Targeting a territorial or strategic rival can revive domestic support because there is little need to justify the military action to the domestic public (Heldt, 1999; Mitchell & Prins, 2004; Tir, 2010). Also, political leaders may target states with rising power and/or a different identity to exploit their domestic audience’s fear of these rivals (Jung, 2014a), whereas they avoid attacking states that are either too powerful or too weak, because either winning is impossible or it will not strengthen their domestic standing (Tarar, 2006). Human rights violators may become democratic regimes’ diversionary targets because a liberal audience readily supports humanitarian intervention (Tokdemir & Mark, 2018).

This paper investigates the impact of a shock to a country’s national income on the intensity of conflicts. It does so by exploiting the commodity terms-of-trade (ToT) as an exogenous source of income variation. Our approach uses a more comprehensive ToT index than earlier studies, tracking a variety of commodities and time-varying trade shares while being scaled to the impact on aggregate income. As a result, our measure minimizes the dependence of results to movements in individual commodities such as oil and is sensitive to fluctuations in aggregate income. Our analysis indicates that a negative ToT shock significantly increases the intensity of conflicts, as measured by the number of conflict events per one million population. We find that the impact tends to be larger and more persistent for Low-Income Countries (LICs) and for Fragile and Conflict-affected States (FCS). Moreover, the impact is positively correlated with the level of inequality and a country’s external debt burden. The former effect is consistent with the opportunity-cost channel, which posits that lower income incentivizes individuals to participate in non-productive activities such as violence. The latter supports the relevance of a state-capacity channel, with lower income weakening a government’s capacity to address the impact of an economic shock on income levels and/or the fallout from conflicts, including through adequate social safety nets. Moreover, we find second-round effects from ToT shocks on the security situation of neighboring countries through spillovers of conflict. Overall, our results highlight that ToT shocks have heterogeneous consequences on the incidence and intensity of conflicts, as the impact is affected by a country’s underlying macroeconomic, institutional, and geographical conditions. The paper’s empirical results suggest that policies matter for the link between macroeconomic shocks and conflicts. First, inclusive growth that increases incomes and reduces inequality should help to enhance an economy’s resilience to shocks and work towards preventing violence. Second, adequate fiscal buffers in the form of sustainable (external) debt levels are critical to mitigate the impact of ToT shocks on an economy’s income and thus the likelihood of conflicts. It is plausible to assume that these fiscal buffers can facilitate the provision of adequate social safety nets, ideally targeted to vulnerable households, to break the negative cycle between economic shocks and violence. The results also suggest that financing engagement by international institutions can play an important role to help countries reduce the likelihood of conflicts when faced with an economic shock, as such financing increases the scope for more budget spending and eases foreign exchange constraints that many LICs tend to experience.

Over the past few decades, the environmental impact of aquaculture has been a popular topic of discussion – one that hasn’t always been the most positive. However, the environmental impact of aquaculture is completely dependent upon the species being farmed, the intensity of production and the location of the farm. Additionally, new strategies and technologies have emerged and have proven that it is possible to have sustainable aquaculture.

Fisheries are without a doubt significant natural resources, particularly for parts of Africa and Asia. However, these areas rely heavily on fisheries for food security are places where the population is growing exponentially, meaning there are even more mouths to feed. Fish farming, when done sustainably, can be the answer to filling the gap in seafood supply that stressed fisheries are creating.

The United Nations maintains 17 Sustainable Development Goals that serve as a framework for international cooperation to help people and the planet thrive.

A recent study from the UN shows that aquaculture can improve food security and nutrition by increasing the amount of seafood available for people to eat. If done correctly, aquaculture increases food production, boosts economic growth in coastal and rural areas, and can help keep waterways clean.

The IPCC Sixth Synthesis Report (AR6) released in March 2023 (Lee et al., 2023) documents that during the last decade (2010–2019), GHG emissions continued to increase “from unsustainable energy use, land use and land-use change, lifestyles and patterns of consumption and production across regions, causing many weather and climate extremes…and led to widespread adverse impacts on food and water security, human health and on economies and society, related losses and damages to nature and people”. Over 90% of human food production comes from terrestrial agriculture, which accounts for an estimated one third of all GHG emissions (Gilbert, 2012). Expansion of terrestrial agriculture, to provide the projected need for foods to 2050, has serious resource and environmental constraints. If relied upon to the exclusion of aquaculture's options, further unacceptable destruction of the Earth's remaining natural ecosystems and reserves from deforestation, conversions of grasslands, expansion of water irrigation systems, etc. will occur (Costa-Pierce, 2016).

There are many proven options known for decades to integrate aquaculture efficiently and sustainably into terrestrial food systems. Expansion of these into Africa is a priority of the CGIAR systems and its WorldFish center (worldfishcenter.org). With the expansion of aquaculture technologies and global economies, land (e.g., recirculating aquaculture systems, RAS) and ocean-based aquaculture food systems developments will need to be integrated with emerging renewable energy systems at all scales (Buck & Langan, 2017; Scroggins et al., 2022; Vo et al., 2021). In addition, as tourism is estimated to account for upwards of 30% of the global economy, development of aquaculture tourism will not only assist in the economic viability of farming livelihoods but in the education of communities in areas of the world where aquaculture is new.

Demand for battery metals is already growing fast, but it’s just getting started. Like it or not, clean technologies like EVs and energy storage, and renewable energies like solar and wind, rely on finite natural resources. As demand for mineral-intensive items like lithium-ion batteries for energy storage and electric vehicles heats up along with the global clean energy transition, the production of these resources is going to need to grow along with it. But can it? Many leading experts have worried about whether the world has enough of these non-renewable resources to make the ‘great reset’ possible without depleting these minerals and driving prices prohibitively high. In short, the worry is no longer peak oil; it’s now peak lithium. One major problem is that no one knows for sure exactly how much lithium we have. As of 2021, it was estimated that the world had 88 million tonnes of lithium resources. One-quarter of that – 22 million tonnes – is feasibly extractable. This issue is that this figure is changing all the time as we explore for more lithium and find more advanced ways to extract it. While there has been much hand wringing about running out, some experts think that it’s far too soon to panic. In fact, the U.S. geological survey says that these kinds of resources are “relatively abundant.” And as Hannah Ritchie, a data scientist at Oxford University, explained early this year: “We keep discovering more lithium, and we get better at mining it.” Basically, she argues, worrying over lithium supply is a malthusian fallacy. Those who claim that we are running out aren’t taking technological advancement into account. If we count the lithium present in seawater, for example, we’ll have more than we could ever need – we just need the technology to extract it. And necessity, as they say, is the mother of invention.

Minerals make up most of what we use to build, manufacture and stand on — including rocks and soil — so if we really ran out of minerals, we'd all be scrambling for a spot on the planet's shrunken surface areas. But if you were worried about running out of a single mineral important for industry, then you probably can breathe easy. Most of the minerals we use a lot are very abundant. Iron, for example, makes up about 32 percent of Earth's crust, so you'd have to worry about finding a place to stand long before worrying about whether we can keep making steel [source: Sharp]. But if we were to run out of a mineral — as in, exhaust our supply — it probably wouldn't be because there's none of it left on Earth. The problem would be that the processes used to extract it have become too expensive, difficult or harmful to make mining worthwhile. Even then, as mining technology advances, previously inaccessible minerals will become available and lower-producing ores will be processed more efficiently. But still, what are we working with here? What are minerals? How big is our planet's supply? Minerals are substances formed naturally underground — think coal, quartz, salt. Like everything else, they're made of elements, basic substances that can't be broken down into simpler substances. Some minerals are single elements, like gold. When we're assessing amounts of minerals in the world, it's more complicated than there being a finite amount of resources that we're using up over time. World mineral reserves are constantly revised based on estimated consumption and current production abilities. For example, in 1950, the estimated copper reserves totaled 100 million metric tons. Over the next 50 years, world copper producers extracted 339 million tons — by 1950 standards we should have run out of copper three times over. For most minerals, supplies have actually increased during the 20th century even though we're using them up faster than ever [source: Blackman] So it's unlikely that Earth will ever run out of minerals. But will people ever experience mineral shortages? Absolutely. In a sense we're always facing mineral shortages. Shortfalls and reduced production stimulate new mines, new technological innovations and lower standards for what counts as high-quality ore. We're also using a wider array of minerals. More than 60 different elements can be used to build a single computer chip [source: Graedel]. A lot of these are minerals that never had industrial applications until 20 or 30 years ago, and they're produced in such small quantities that they're much more susceptible to supply risks. And we have sort of run out of a mineral before. Cryolite, which used to be part of the aluminum production process, is no longer available. Greenland had the last cryolite deposits rich enough to make extraction worthwhile, but the mine closed in the 1980s when new processing techniques let us make aluminum without it. However, even though you can't get cryolite on the market, small veins still exist in spots throughout the world. Opening an expensive mine to extract a mineral nobody needs just doesn't make sense — it would be like building a factory that only manufactures LaserDisc players and telegraph parts. We won't be able to rely on technology to replace just any old mineral, though. A 2013 Yale University study found no potential substitutes for the major uses of a dozen or so metals vital for manufacturing. Some are abundant enough that we don't have to worry about running out anytime soon. For example, 90 percent of manganese is used in making steel. It's irreplaceable, and depleting it would hamstring world steel production — but manganese is also the 12th most common element on Earth, and world ore reserves are estimated at 380 million tons [source: Corathers]. Lead is another irreplaceable mineral, used in goods as varied as car batteries and organ pipes. But with 90 million tons in reserves worldwide, we're nowhere close to using it up [source: Statista].

In the 1956 presentation of his model, Hubbert preceded his theoretical prediction of peak oil production in the United States with a discussion and plotting of some select cases of the history of mineral production. These cases included the world production of coal and crude oil (Hubbert, 1956, p. 9), United States production of coal and crude oil (Hubbert, 1956, p. 10), and Texas production of crude oil and natural gas (Hubbert, 1956, p. 10). All of these curves showed exponential growth without decline. To extrapolate the curves, Hubbert invoked two axioms. First, production must begin and end at zero. Second, the total area under the production curve had to equal the size of the ultimate resource, a static number in Hubbert’s mind. Because Hubbert was well aware that theoretical models needed empirical corroboration, he invoked the case history of petroleum production in the state of Ohio. Hubbert noted that production began a “sharp rise in 1884, passed through three maxima between 1890 and 1900 with the peak about 1896, and since then has undergone a slow, steady decline” (Hubbert, 1956, p. 12). A second case considered by Hubbert was oil production in the state of Illinois. The production curve for Illinois did not resemble the curve for Ohio. In the case of Illinois, there were two separate peaks, with the second peak being approximately four times higher than the first peak. Any prediction of resource exhaustion inferred from the first part of the curve would have been grossly in error. Hubbert noted that the existence of the two peaks was due to the introduction of new technology: “A new cycle of exploration using the seismograph was initiated in 1937” (Hubbert, 1956, p. 12). Apparently dismissing or ignoring the implications of the case of Illinois for making valid predictions of future production, Hubbert proceeded to make predictions for peak oil production for both the United States and the world from a single bell-shaped curve. A common misconception is that Hubbert’s curves were Gaussian. This is not correct. The curves in the 1956 predictions were drawn by hand. Later, Hubbert (1982) formally based production curves on the logistic equation originally derived by the Belgian demographer Pierre François Verhulst (Deming, 2001). Hubbert (1956) estimated that the size of the ultimate recoverable resource in the United States was 150 billion bbl. Being fully aware that past estimates had been too low, sometimes grossly so, Hubbert also calculated a curve for the higher number of 200 billion bbl. He characterized the extra 50 billion bbl as “an amount equal to 8 East Texas oil fields,” the implication being that he considered this to be an absolute, if not exaggerated, outer limit of what was possible (Hubbert, 1956, p. 18). The two curves yielded peaks in the years 1965 and 1970, respectively. Hubbert conceded that secondary recovery techniques could increase his estimates of the resource size, but he only anticipated that the “effect of improved recovery will be to reduce the rate of decline after the culmination” (Hubbert, 1956, p. 18). The timing of peak production would remain unchanged. Hubbert pressed ahead with this analysis even though the admission of its very unsoundness was explicit. He assumed, without justification, that oil production in the United States would mimic the case history of Ohio, not that of Illinois. Ironically, the production curve for crude oil in Ohio, which appeared to follow Hubbert’s peak oil model for several decades, later diverged and exhibited multiple peaks. In 2019, the oil production of Ohio exceeded 27 million bbl, surpassing peak production in the 1890s (US Energy Information Administration, 2023). Hubbert continued to revisit the peak oil hypothesis for the rest of his career. In 1967, he noted that there had been a “succession of recent assurances that the oil present in the United States may be as much as 3-5 times that discovered already” (Hubbert, 1967, p. 2208), but stuck with his earlier appraisal that the size of the ultimate recoverable petroleum resource in the United States would not exceed 200 billion bbl. Hubbert again explicitly conceded that “the curve reaches one or more maxima” (Hubbert, 1967, p. 2209), but then stuck with his original 1956 prediction of peak oil production between 1965 and 1970, based upon a single symmetric curve.

The definitive presentation of Hubbert’s peak oil theory was in his 1956 paper “Nuclear Energy and the Fossil Fuels,” published in the American Petroleum Institute journal Drilling and Production Practice, but the roots of his paper and model had been laid down decades earlier. The earliest traceable influence on Hubbert’s approach to resource depletion appears to have been the work Cycles in Metal Production by D. F. Hewett (Hewett, 1929; Clark, 1983; Priest, 2014). Hewett was a pessimist. He concluded that “many of our outstanding districts of a few years ago show signs of exhaustion, and we are sustaining or increasing national totals by turning quickly to new sources of lower grade. If science and technique can keep up the pace, we have no cause for concern. Personally, I doubt that they can much longer” (Hewett, 1929, p. 92). In his Technocracy Study Course, Hubbert drew a bell-shaped curve that he claimed was “characteristic of the exploitation of any non-recurrent material, such as all mineral resources” (Hubbert, 1934, p. 101). This explicitly included oil. In 1941, Hubbert published “Economic Transition and Its Human Consequences” in the journal Advanced Management. Therein we find a drawing of a bell-shaped curve that is said to be “descriptive of the rate of production of all non-recurrent mineral resources” (Hubbert, 1941, p. 99). The next sentence is a frank admission that the entire peak oil theory that flourished for several decades was always flawed. Hubbert conceded, “The curve rises to one or more maxima and ultimately declines to zero as the resource is exhausted” (Hubbert, 1941, p. 99). If the curve can have “one or more maxima,” then it has no single peak. If the curve has no predetermined or definable shape, then no estimate of resource depletion can be made, because there is no way to know whether a single peak will not be followed by another peak ad infinitum. The whole point of peak oil theory was to model and predict resource exhaustion. For example, on the basis of a single bell-shaped curve, Campbell and Laherrere (1998) predicted that world oil production would peak shortly after 2000 and then begin a systematic and irreversible decline. However, Hubbert conceded from the beginning that no single model could have any predictive validity. Other critics have also noted that from its very inception the Hubbert model never had any validity for forecasting future oil production and depletion. Lynch (2016, p. 76) concluded “the creator of the Hubbert curve admitted that there was no underlying reason to use a bell curve”; thus, “neither theory nor reality supports the argument.” McCabe (1998, p. 2132) argued that a Hubbert-style analysis “does not hold up to scrutiny of its basic assumptions.” He documented that “the shape of a production curve is as much controlled by the demand for the energy source as it is by its availability” (McCabe, 1998, p. 2132). The historical production of anthracite coal in Pennsylvania has closely followed a symmetric Hubbert curve, but the resource is not exhausted. Production declined because of a decrease in demand (McCabe, 1998, p. 2125).

When I was younger, there was a lot of hubbub about the concept of “peak oil.” Technically, the phrase just refers to the point where we reach the highest level of global oil production, after which it begins a permanent decline. This will probably happen at some point, as we deplete the cheapest-to-access sources of oil and transition to an economy that’s less dependent on it. Efforts to predict when it’ll happen have a terrible track record, though. The 1956 paper that introduced the concept suggested the US would reach peak oil production by 1970. Oil production did peak around then and start to decline — but then new prospecting and extraction technologies were developed, and oil production surged back, in 2017 reaching and then surpassing the heights it had hit back in 1970. And when I was a teenager, around 2007 to 2008, there were a lot of assertions we’d “reached peak oil” globally, often coupled with dire predictions about the future availability of gasoline — but in fact, US oil production doubled from 2008 to 2016, and OPEC chose to raise production, with the big story of the mid-2010s being one about an “oil glut” where prices dove to historic lows. There’s a sense where “peak oil” is less a question about how much oil is actually in the ground than about how we expect it will be priced. But, while the cost of gasoline has huge economic and geopolitical implications, I don’t think that’s the whole reason the idea had such a draw. There’s a moralistic tinge to worries about peak oil. Like virtually all natural resources, oil is ultimately finite, and we extract and consume it without any particular regard for long-term planning. There’s a sense in which it feels just and karmically appropriate for a foolish shortsighted civilization to run out of the resource it runs on (and the resource it’s burning at enormous costs to the world). People were drawn to the idea of peak oil because it provided additional justification to switch away from petroleum fuels, and a sense of an impending moment of truth where we’d have to switch away like it or not. A clear-eyed look at resource usage It turns out that karmic appropriateness is a terrible way to make predictions about economic reality. We may feel like we’re a self-destructive civilization facing its just deserts, but this doesn’t turn out to be an effective way to predict future resource availability at all. While there are real physical limits on resource extraction, predicting those limits is very hard, because advancing technology keeps increasing resource accessibility. That 1956 paper I reference above was pretty good at anticipating American oil production with contemporary methods — it just failed to anticipate momentous technological changes. And it was very foolish to fail to anticipate momentous technological changes! Given decades of time and a strong profit motive, it’s in fact unsurprising that there were massive adjustments to how we drill for oil and how we find it. In a way, “technology won’t change very much over the course of decades in a highly profitable relatively new industry” isn’t a conservative prediction, but rather a foolish one. I was thinking about this because of news that we just discovered a 50-year supply of phosphorus in Norway. Phosphorus is another resource that I’ve heard claims that we might run short of. (It’s one of the resources that so-called degrowth analyses tend to look closely at, with one degrowth paper calculating a “planetary boundary” of less than 1 ton of phosphorus per person per year.) Phosphorus is important for fertilizer, solar panels, and electric batteries, and until recently, the world had confirmed reserves of around 71 billion metric tons. Then, Norge Mining, based on information from the Norwegian Geological Survey, recently found another 70 billion metric tons — just like that. And unlike when companies locate more crude oil, this discovery is pretty much uncomplicatedly great news. It reduces Europe’s reliance on imports for strategically important resources; it should help the price of fertilizer stay low, putting less pressure on food prices; and it should mean that battery and solar panel manufacturers can more easily plan on continued access to the resources they need. (For the US, it helps that the discovery was made in a friendly country.) It’s also just a reminder that we should employ a nuanced understanding of what it means to be “projected to run short” on a resource. The world is enough The planet does have finite physical limits that are important to keep in mind. But those finite physical limits are often fairly enormous — we live on a very big chunk of rock! More often, the limiting factors in our resource access aren’t the resource itself, but rather our technology for surveying and our technology for extraction. Instead of living in some morality play where we foolishly run out of a resource we were treating as infinite, we live in a more complicated world where more investment and development can secure more resources, but where we also need to be thoughtful about when it’s worth governments making those resource investments. Petroleum burning has all the catastrophic consequences for the world that we thought. But we’re not going to “run out” — we’ll have to deliberately replace petroleum with cleaner energy sources as a policy choice. And projected shortages of resources like phosphorus are no reason to claim that the planet can’t sustain its current population or its current wealth level and needs to resign itself to an impoverished future — they’re a reason to go look for more phosphorus. Instead of saying that limited access to fertilizer is a “planetary boundary” we must respect by making people poorer, we can keep in mind that limited access to fertilizer is a policy choice. I’m hardly saying we should always choose the policy of more mining and prospecting — it depends what we’re mining and prospecting for — but I sometimes notice an impulse to pretend this isn’t a policy choice at all, just an inevitable law of nature, and I think it’s important to take ownership of the economic forces that govern resource access in our world.

The large future buildout of new electricity generation infrastructure will require significant raw materials. However, while the minerals and heavy industrial sectors remain relatively carbon intensive, the emissions associated with sourcing raw materials for power sector generation infrastructure represent a small fraction of remaining carbon budgets across all scenarios tested. Global mineral reserves should adequately meet needs posed by power sector material demand. However, estimated future demand could consume a meaningful fraction of current annual production for many raw materials and may necessitate expansion of global production by severalfold for certain inputs like Nd, fiberglass, Dy, solar-grade polysilicon, and Te. Energy system design affects future material demand, with scenarios that deploy higher shares of wind and solar generation requiring larger quantities of material. Projected needs highlight the importance of proactive efforts to develop new mineral production, particularly considering the long lead times required to establish new supply chains.7 Public climate policies should support new mineral resource development for clean technologies while enforcing accountability, promoting community and labor engagement, and requiring responsible technical practices to prevent inequitable economic, health, or environmental impacts.8,10,50,51 Most material-associated emissions result from the high demand for solar-grade polysilicon, as well as bulk materials such as steel, cement, and Cu that are commonly required across most generation technologies. Proactive industrial sector decarbonization efforts alongside the process of power sector decarbonization can help avoid some of these material-associated emissions. Recycling and innovation to reduce material demand could play meaningful roles in cutting future requirements for individual raw materials50 but will not change the overall anticipated increase in material demand. With the power sector becoming a sizable industrial consumer of some inputs, the mining and mineral processing sector will consequently play a crucial role in supporting the clean energy transition. Nevertheless, researchers, policymakers, and industry stakeholders should endeavor to improve material efficiency and recycling practices to marginally reduce future mineral needs. As this modeling analysis illustrates, estimates of future material demands from clean energy technologies may vary widely across scenarios due to differing assumptions and technology selections. While an increasing number of studies have begun to examine material requirements associated not just with power generation infrastructure but also transmission and distribution networks, energy storage systems, and clean vehicles,26,35,36,37,52 approaches that assess material needs for a range of scenarios can help constrain the key drivers and upper and lower bounds of future material demand. With the research community’s understanding of the magnitude of future material demand for clean technologies coalescing, a shift in focus to explore the effect of technological improvements, material substitution, recycling, and alternative technological choices can help identify promising solutions.