Preface. Even if you go off the grid, civilization is using up minerals at an exponential rate to maintain the non-negotiable American lifestyle, which in 2006, required 3.7 million pounds of minerals, metals, and fuels in each person’s lifetime, or 47,769 lbs per person per year. The 2023 VisualCapitalist states 39,291 pounds per person, but the 2006 estimate includes other items such as copper, clays, and other materials.

Alice Friedemann  www.energyskeptic.com  Author of Life After Fossil Fuels: A Reality Check on Alternative Energy; When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation”, Barriers to Making Algal Biofuels, & “Crunch! Whole Grain Artisan Chips and Crackers”.  Women in ecology  Podcasts: WGBH, Jore, Planet: Critical, Crazy Town, Collapse Chronicles, Derrick Jensen, Practical Prepping, Kunstler 253 &278, Peak Prosperity,  Index of best energyskeptic posts

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2023 Visualizing U.S. consumption of fuel and materials

https://elements.visualcapitalist.com/visualizing-u-s-consumption-of-fuel-and-materials-per-capita/

BBC 2022 How ending mining would change the world.

If you live in a high-income country, every year you use roughly 26 tonnes of raw materials – equivalent to the weight of 4.5 elephants and twice as much as 20 years ago. Extracting new materials continues to be cheaper than recycling. ACTIVE mines take up an area larger than Australia.  Add in illegal and abandoned mines and the area is even larger. Consequences of suddenly stopping mining include: loss of 4 million mining jobs and 100 million more jobs that depend on mining.  Since 35% of the world relies on coal for electricity, there would be a sudden energy crisis in most nations. Followed not long after by natural gas power plants winking out, and plastic production stopped. The 50 billion tonnes of sand mined a year would no longer be available for concrete, so there goes a lot of road and building construction since very little concrete is recycled. Metal prices would skyrocket, thieves would steal copper and other metals from buildings, street lamps and more. And finally when oil stockpiles ran out, there goes food, fertilizers, and more. [Then this article gets silly and veers away from collapse and into fantastical daydreams of how everything could be turned around]. And the returns to reality by describing the nightmare of all the toxic mining wastes that need to be cleaned up

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The amount of minerals per person is going down because the population is going up (not efficiency or less consumption) — we are simply each getting tinier pieces of pie every year

2007 population 301,200,000 / 2019 328,200,000

• Copper 1,398 lbs / 980
• Phosphate rock 18,447 lbs / 14,337
• Coal 578,956 lbs / 330,573
• Aluminum (bauxite) 5,417 lbs / 2,066
• Iron Ore 32,654 lbs / 20,127
• Cement 75,047 / 53,071
• Natural Gas 5.71 million cubic feet (mcf) / 7.7 mcf
• Lead 911 lbs / 953 lbs
• Petroleum 82,199 gallons / 75,327
• Stone, sand, & Gravel 1,720,000 lbs / 1,360,000 lbs
• Zinc 773 lbs / 466
• Clays 20,452 lbs / 12,182
• Salt 31,909 / 30,190

How one earth do we use that much?

1. 130 million homes (2010) need heating, cooling, and lighting. Each needs insulation (silica, feldspar, trona
2. 2 million new housing units are built every year and each needs a quarter million pounds of minerals and metals.
3. 4 million miles of roads that need to be built and maintained. 85,000 tons of aggregates are required for each mile of interstate highway.
4. 255,917,664 passenger vehicles weighing an average of 3,000 lbs driven 12,000 miles/yr using 550 gallons of oil. travel these roads, consuming an average of 3 gallons of oil per day. The average automobile contains more than a ton of iron and steel, 240 lbs of aluminum, 50 lbs of carbon, 42 lbs of copper, 41 lbs of silicon, 22 lbs of zinc, and more than thirty other mineral commodities, including titanium, platinum, and gold?
5. Each of them requires insulation (silica, feldspar and trona), roofing (silica sands, limestone and petroleum) and hardware (iron, zinc, copper, steel, brass). Glass windows are made of trona, silica sand, limestone and feldspar. Foundations consist of concrete made from sand, gravel and cement. Cement is made of limestone, bauxite, clay, shale and gypsum. The concrete is reinforced with steel rods.
6. Over131 billion cans are produced / year;  63% of the steel cans and 52% of the aluminum cans are recycled.
7. 80% of the electricity used in the U.S. is generated by fuels obtained by mining: 47% from coal, 20% from natural gas and oil, 21% from nuclear power. Only 7% is generated by hydro, with another 5% from geothermal, solar, wind and biomass combined.
8. 1.28 billion cell phones sold worldwide in 2008 each has $1 of gold, plus 42 other minerals and metals.

Exponential growth is not sustainable. The United States Geological Survey (USGS) says that “demand for critical mineral resources is increasing at a rapid rate. That means that we are depleting our known mineral deposits at an increasing rate.”

• 1776: 2,800,000 people : 1,200 lbs of minerals per year.
• 1900: 76,000,000 people:  7,714 lbs of minerals per year, 6 times more than 1776.
• 2006: 300,000,000 million people: 47,769 lbs of minerals per year, 40 times more than 1776.

Per Year every American consumes (2007):

• 12,464 lbs. Stone to make roads; buildings; bridges; landscaping; numerous chemical and construction uses
• 9,718 lbs. Sand & Gravel for concrete; asphalt; roads; blocks & bricks
• 965 lbs. Cement  roads; sidewalks; bridges; buildings; schools; houses
• 420 lbs. Iron Ore  steel  buildings; cars, trucks, planes, & trains; other construction; containers
• 410 lbs. Salt used in various chemicals; highway deicing; food & agriculture
• 237 lbs. Phosphate Rock fertilizers to grow food; animal feed supplements
• 263 lbs. Clays  floor & wall tile; dinnerware; kitty litter; bricks & cement; paper
• 70 lbs. Aluminum (Bauxite) used to make buildings; beverage containers; autos; airplanes
• 18 lbs. Copper buildings; electrical & electronic parts; plumbing; transportation
• 12 lbs. Lead  75% used for transportation— batteries; electrical; communications; TV screens
• 10 lbs. Zinc used to make metals rust resistant; various metals & alloys; paint; rubber; skin creams; health care; and nutrition
• 44 lbs. Soda Ash used to make all kinds of glass, in powdered detergents, medicines, as a food additive, photography, water treatment.
• 6 lbs. Manganese used to make almost all steels for: construction; machinery; transportation
• 665 lbs. Other Nonmetals numerous uses glass; chemicals; soaps; paper; computers; cell phones; etc.
• 30 lbs. Other Metals numerous uses same as nonmetals, but also electronics; TV & video equipment; recreation equipment; etc.

Maintaining the American standard of living required 7.1 billion tons of rocks and minerals last year, or 48,000 pounds of new minerals for every person in the USA.  125 million houses require heating, cooling, and lighting, and 2 million new houses a year each need 250,000 pounds of minerals and metals.  There are 4 million miles of roads that need to be built and maintained. 237 million motor vehicles. And so on.

REFERENCES

300 Million Americans use 7 Billion Tons of minerals a year. March 2007. Mineral information institute.

MEC. 2020. Mining and mineral statistics. Minerals Education Coalition. https://mineralseducationcoalition.org/mining-mineral-statistics