Who knew it would be so simple? All we have to do is gather urine and we’ll be flying our electrical air taxi tomorrow!
While the private-jet crowd is hectic selling a future of 1 billion electrical lorries, 1 billion windmills, 1 billion solar selections, hundreds of thousands of electrical aircraft, countless new nuclear reactor and trillions more in “wealth” collecting in their bloated journals, reality is invading their technocratic dreams.
The primary assumption of the private-jet crowd is that the industrialized world will continue to have a complimentary pass to strip developing-world countries of their mineral wealth at the low, low cost of a bribe to the present kleptocrats in power and low, low earnings paid to local workers. The profits will naturally flow to the private-jet crowd– it’s the Divine Right of Capital.
Well-informed readers guarantee me that the technologies of extracting resources have actually reached such heights that resources will continue to be low-cost. I believe that technological advances have reduced the costs of extraction and opened access to much deeper deposits, however I also believe that the biosphere, physics, chemistry and geopolitics continue to set limitations that no technological advancement can prevent.
In the technocratic fantasy mindset, all that matters is the electrical energy that recharges the electric lorry is “carbon-free.” The sources and quantities of energy needed to fabricate the electrical automobile, pave the roads the vehicle takes a trip on, and so on are easily ignored because the metals, plastics, glass, semiconductors, batteries, etc required to produce the lorry require huge amounts of diesel fuel to power the mining devices, transportation the ore to be processed, then carried to the mills, then on to the factory, and so on, huge quantities of coal to fire the smelting, vast quantities of fresh water for all these procedures, large amounts of electrical power, very little of which is originated from nuclear or so-called renewable sources (all of which have to be changed every 15 to twenty years), and so on.
In the technocratic fantasy state of mind, any deposit anywhere on earth is accessible to high tech procedures. In the real world, deposits might be far from paved highways, far from significant river or bluewater ports, far from processing plants, and far from sources of the millions of liters of diesel fuel that will be required onsite to draw out the ores.
The entire facilities to reach the website needs to be developed and maintained, and countless liters of diesel fuel provided to power the enormous devices needed to extract the resources. Then the ore must be transferred numerous kilometers to a port capable of handling this tremendous bulk commodity. There is no way all this will be affordable and low-risk.
Here’s a list of 8 prospective sources of deficiencies of necessary products. This list not extensive, it is merely suggestive of the lots of real-world limits on the technocratic fantasy.
1. Resources have actually been diminished internationally so there is no longer enough supply to meet increasing worldwide demand at affordable prices. Sure, there’s always more somewhere– but at what expense?
2. Exporting nations limit exports to fulfill their own rising domestic demand. Yes, it’s irritating that our oil, cobalt, lithium, etc is under their sand and they decide to use it for their own people.
3. The low-hanging fruit has been consumed and staying deposits remain in difficult-to-access regions of severe conditions or political disorder. The developed-world exploiters might wind up getting an AK-47 round as a dividend.
4. Exporting nations cut off exports to the U.S. as a type of take advantage of. Nice high-tech economy of gamers and traders you arrived; regrettable we’re experiencing problems in providing the cobalt, rare earth minerals, etc you require to keep your gamers and traders happy. We make sure you’ll see the knowledge of adhering to the new arrangement we propose.
5. Remaining deposits are under the control of geopolitical rivals. See above.
6. There is no longer enough diesel fuel to power the global supply chain of mining and transport of necessary minerals: the restricting factor is not the availability of deposits but of the fuel needed to extract and transportation ores.
7. Supplies are available but at costs that are unaffordable to American homes with stagnant purchasing power, i.e., the bottom 90%.
8. Having tired of neocolonial exploitation of their national resources, advanced governments expropriate developed-world resource extraction properties and take control of extraction, restricting exports and dramatically raising costs.
There’s always more techno-fantastic headings guaranteeing infinite abundance of whatever. This is my preferred today: Scientists Perfect Renewable Power from Urine While Cleaning Wastewater in South Korea. Who understood it would be so easy? All we have to do is gather urine and we’ll be flying our electrical air taxi tomorrow!
There’s always more till the real world intrudes.
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