Not content with frightening people about peak oil and global climate change, environmentalists are now fretting about peak phosphorus. The eminent but late Isaac Asimov once argued that phosphorus was the main limiting factor to human population growth on Earth. “Life can multiply until all the phosphorus is gone,” he wrote, “and then there is an inexorable halt which nothing can prevent,” because plants need phosphorus and there is simply no substitute for phosphorus when growing crops.
Some argue that the Earth only has about 30 to 40 years’ worth of phosphorus left to mine, after which we much switch to expensive methods of recycling. Yet others claim this is a “complete lie,” and that in fact the world has plenty of phosphorus for the foreseeable future.
Forbes Magazine goes so far as to argue that it is foolish to even worry about finding ways to recycle phosphorus. A USGS report says that the world uses about 200 million tons of phosphates per year, but has reserves of 67 billion tons (more than 300 years’ worth) and a total of 300 billion tons of phosphate resources (well over 1,000 years’ worth).
