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).
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Even if the day of reckoning is more than 1,000 years away, is it fair for us to use the phosphates now and leave this serious problem to the future? Of course it is. We could bankrupt ourselves trying to find a solution to a problem that won’t exist for hundreds of years, thereby leaving the future even worse off. Or we could use the rocks, build our wealth, and give the future the most options possible.
People who worry about peak oil, peak phosphorus, or peak anything simply don’t understand how market economies respond to scarcity. They first use the least-expensive resources, then rely on human ingenuity to make other resources available.
“It is not our part to master all the tides of the world,” as J.R.R. Tolkien wrote, “but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.”
Peak Potable water? All of these experts are all predicting wars will break out over resources. Typically the one they talk of most is water. But the supposed water wars of the future will never erupt. Water is too heavy and dense a substance. A gallon of water weighs over 8 pounds, so transporting it accounts for most of the costs, so the idea of these Mad Max style thugs running off with water jugs is ridiculous, they would have to drink a lot of it sweating from the workout carrying it. It’s not to say micro conflicts do not occur when certain resources are denied. A month’s worth of fighting between Israel and neighboring nations over water sources would be more costly than if Israel built several desalination plants. Human activity consumed 3000 cubic kilometers of water in the year 2000, up from 600 cubic km in 1900. Yet the world contains 1.38 billion cubic kilometers of water, 461,000 times more water than we currently use. Since future demands for water coincide with a future growing GDP, water access and cleanliness will increase in the future not decrease. Desalination is expensive no doubt and recycling waste water is less expensive than the latter but more expensive than traditional water, but the costs are becoming more competitive, desalination costs have declined by half in the last ten years and no doubt will decline even further in the next decade. In the near future we’ll recycle all our waste water for immediate human consumption. The same technology that is used aboard the space station. In the not to distant future, all current and expected water treatment or desalination technologies are gonna be rendered obsolete by a new technology; Nanotube membranes. They function on the size of the gaps of linked carbon atoms to restrict most particles to flow through it. Water molecules are barely small enough to fit through thus must be forced through at high pressure, but prevent larger particles like bacteria, prions, poisons, viruses, salts and other particles which are too large to fit. Treatment or desalination will be interlinked to provide water needs and with far less energy and labor needed to do it and the costs of doing either is gonna be comparable or superior to previous technology which require lots of mechanical parts to separate and lots of chemical separators and disinfectants. If nano membranes can be mass produced we can distribute portable units that are hand or animal powered to provide drinking water to developing nations. The demand for what was considered a scarce resource led to the development of an economical way of extracting it or substitutes. The ”scarcer” a resource is, the more incentives to replace it.
Example: In the 1970?s and 80?s, computer and telecommunications was rapidly growing requiring huge demand for copper to wire the world. Fears regarding copper price surges and monopolies hoarding stockpiles selling to select few. But by the 90?s copper prices experienced a decline due to the invention of optical fiber replacing copper for the telecommunications market and millions of miles of lines have been strewn across the country and around the world in far greater excess than copper might have provided. Being largely made of glass (i.e sand) and I doubt wars will ever be fought over something as ubiquitous as kitty litter. he Stone Age did not end because we ran out of stone. For thousands of years, people have always suffered pathological fears about the end of civilization brought on by disasters further brought on by stories of natural catastrophe (2012), aliens (Independence Day, War of the Worlds), zombies (George A. Romero), plagues (28 Days Later), society dystopia (1984, THX-1138), techno-facism (The Terminator, The Matrix), resource scarcity (Paul Ehrlich or Kunstlers books); But as resources become more scarce, the price rises, creating an incentive to adapt. Markets have always been the best way to increase wealth and prosperity. The more a society has to invent and innovate the easier the society will raise its living standards and lower resource scarcity. People, on average, add to civilization more than they take away. People are the ultimate natural resource.
Freshwater Reserves Under Ocean Floors ‘100 Times Greater’ Than What We’ve Used Since 1900
Peak oil. Peak copper. Peak phosphorus. If there is enough money to be made, someone in a garage (a structure not found in smart growth areas) to try a technique not being pursued. Much like the blue led guy who tried a method that the big guys thought wouldn’t work. I’m hoping that someday diffuse off shore gold deposits will be mined someday and crash the market.
Yeah, why worry about anything other than building our wealth? No human society has ever collapsed due to ecological waste or resource exhaustion. Oh wait . . .
Accumulated wealth can help solve ecological problems. When wealth is accumulated, it allows for investment in technology, technology which may be helpful in solving ecological problems. Destruction of wealth, however, weakens a society’s ability to respond to problems.
The comparison to Easter Island is spurious as it does not reflect building wealth; it’s more akin to a public works project that destroyed wealth and misallocated resources.
It isn’t a matter of understanding economics. It is a matter of acknowledging the limitations of ones data. The problem isn’t that they don’t know how markets work, it’s that they won’t acknowledge all of the possible changes the future could bring.
Phosphorus is essential for growing crops. Which groups of millions of people do you want to starve because we should not use the phosphorus we need?
There is no question that some in power in the US and UN would be happy to create a “phosphorus shortage” so that they could make the choice as to who lives or dies. Based on how certain politically-connected groups have been exempted from Obamacare, it is doubtful the choice will be fairly made.
The other essential nutrient for plant and crop growth is CO2. But that has been labelled a “pollutant” so we are ordered not allow any CO2 to be created.
Those with closed minds will justify all of this. Unfortunately, they will never be held accountable for the suffering and death that follows their policies and orders.
I toooooooooooooootally agree: we can just continue to exploit resources with no thought to their exhaustion. After all, we live on an infinite sphere of unlimited dimension! And those people who have done those calcalatin’ with them fancy-pants numbers? Who needs ’em?
DS
Yes, and those who live in SFHs and reproduce are the biggest resource exploiters. They should be forced to live in dense inner city neighborhoods.
What we really need is peak government planning.
“Water wars” is all about water being very close to free. In most US gas stations a bottle of water cost 2-10 times as much as gasoline but nobody cares.
Would people quit listening to environmentalist wacko people who do not understand what “proven reserve” means. Or would they please call me and I would be happy to invest their money into all the liberally correct “proven” investments that will certainly pay off with Al Gore.
The problem isn’t that they don’t know how markets work, it’s that they won’t acknowledge all of the possible changes the future could bring.
Maybe, but technological change is a fundamental part of how market participants respond to scarcity. Ignoring this will always, always lead to incorrect predictions. Incidentally, it is the only possible way one could reach the scary, neo-Malthusian kinds of predictions that the proponents of ‘peak phosphorus’ or peak (fill in the blank) promote.
the scary, neo-Malthusian kinds of predictions that the proponents of ‘peak phosphorus’ or peak (fill in the blank) promote.
Are you claiming the ag people calculating remaining stocks are incorrect? On what information do you base this statement?
DS