Page 42 - BBC Focus - August 2017

OPINION

reserve, so companies that mine phosphorus and
potassium don’t prove more reserves than they
need for the foreseeable future.

RENEWABLE RESOURCE
This example reminds us that the distinction
between renewable and non-renewable resources
is confused. A phosphorus atom is renewable –
you can use it over and over again. It’s possible that
one or two of the trillions of phosphorus atoms in
your DNA were in Leonardo da Vinci at some
point. Imagine: Leonardo defecated; the sewage
ended up in the Mediterranean where it fuelled
phytoplankton that got eaten by a fish, which
migrated south through the Atlantic and got eaten
by a bird which landed on an
island off Africa and defecated,
leaving guano on the rock that
was mined in the 19th-Century
to make fertiliser that was spread
on an English field, where it got
recycled through many
generations of plants before
ending up in you, via a burger.
ABOVE: Oil sand 2 possibility of us even running Whales or woodlands, by
being mined in a bit short of any of them for contrast, though renewable, are
Canada. Oil
sand is a thousands of years.” indeed capable of running out.
deposit Still the predictions of After killing hundreds of
consisting of a
mixture of clay, elements running out kept thousands of whales in the 19th
water, soil and coming. In 2012, Jeremy Century, we came close to having
bitumen. Once Grantham, a financier who funds none left, then along came crude
the oil has been
extracted and climate change pressure groups, published an oil just in the nick of time to save them (kerosene
separated, it editorial in Nature. “Then there is the impending lamps displaced whale oil). After damming the
can be refined shortage of two fertilisers: phosphorus streams and felling the woods of Britain for energy
to create fuels
– it is less (phosphate) and potassium (potash),” he wrote. throughout the Middle Ages, we were running
efficient to “These two elements cannot be made, cannot be dangerously short of energy sources. Then along
extract than
conventional oil substituted, are necessary to grow all life forms, came coal and we began replanting our forests and
and are mined and depleted. It’s a scary set of freeing our rivers.
RIGHT: statements… What happens when these fertilisers It’s a bizarre but true fact that organic, renewable
Germanium,
a rare earth run out is a question I can’t get satisfactorily resources run out all too easily – mammoths,
element, is answered and, believe me, I have tried.” passenger pigeons, white-pine forests, Steller’s sea
obtained during He cannot have tried very hard. These two cows – while no inorganic resource has even come
the smelting of
zinc ores. It is elements are never used up, they are just close to running out: not oil, gas or coal; not silver,
used for the transferred from mines to farms. The highest- copper or phosphorus; not limestone, granite or
manufacture sand. As somebody once said, the Stone Age did
of optics grade ores may run out, but there are vast
quantities of lower-grade ones down to and not end for lack of stone.
MAIN IMAGE: including the stuff that has already been used and
A mound of
potash fertiliser has ended up back in the sea or the soil. STRUGGLING PLANET?
stored at a Grantham’s mistake was to confuse reserves with To sustain our current lifestyle, we humans
potash mine in resources. It takes money to turn a resource into a require 1.4 planets’ worth of resources. That’s 2
Unterbreizbach,
Germany

“WHALES OR WOODLANDS ARE INDEED PHOTOS: GETTY X2, SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

CAPABLE OF RUNNING OUT”

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