Roughly 55 kilometers (35 miles) south of Laverton, Western Australia, lies the Sunrise Dam Gold Mine. A gold deposit was discovered in the area in 1988, and by 1995, the mine was open for business. Started as an open pit mine, the operation expanded to include underground mining in 2003. The mine produces roughly 460,000 ounces of gold each year, according to AngloGold Ashanti, which operates the mine. NASA Earth Observatory image created by Jesse Allen
Roughly 55 kilometers (35 miles) south of Laverton, Western Australia, lies the Sunrise Dam Gold Mine. A gold deposit was discovered in the area in 1988, and by 1995, the mine was open for business. Started as an open pit mine, the operation expanded to include underground mining in 2003. The mine produces roughly 460,000 ounces of gold each year, according to AngloGold Ashanti, which operates the mine. NASA Earth Observatory image created by Jesse Allen

By David Biello
25 May 2011

(Scientific American) – The human enterprise now consumes nearly 60 billion metric tons of minerals, ores, fossil fuels and plant materials, such as crop plants and trees for timber or paper. Meanwhile, the seven billionth person on the planet is expected to be born this year—and the human population may reach 10 billion by this century’s end, according to the latest United Nations analysis. Hundreds of millions of people in Europe, North America and Asia live a modern life, which largely means consuming more than 16 metric tons of such natural resources—or more—per person per year. If the billions of poor people living today or born tomorrow consume anything approaching this figure, the world will have to find more than 140 billion metric tons of such materials each year by mid-century, according to a new report from the U.N. Enviromental Programme.

Figuring out how to do more with less is becoming a global necessity. The international agency derived its consumption figures by simply dividing the total world production figures for such commodities by national population. The good news is that economic prosperity has been rising faster than direct resource consumption. Between 1980 and 2002, the resources required to produce $1,000 worth of consumer goods fell from 2.1 metric tons to just 1.6 metric tons and global per capita income has increased seven-fold. The bad news is that trend will not necessarily continue and—in absolute terms—resource consumption has increased 10-fold since 1900.

Of course, a wide array of national governments and even the international community have committed to “sustainable development,” variously defined but essentially attempts to reduce things like energy use or resource extraction that go along with economic growth. Those lofty goals, however, do not match up to facts on the ground: such as an unwillingness on the part of the U.S. to lower its consumption or a hesitance on the part of China to restrain its economic growth. This is the exact recipe for creating the kind of commodity price spikes the world is already enjoying in everything ranging from essential food crops to the “luxuries” of modern life such as copper for electric wiring or oil for transportation. Increased demand is running up against increased scarcity as well; already it takes three times as much total mining material to produce the same amount of ore as 100 years ago and the era of easy oil is over. […]

Will 10 Billion People Use Up the Planet’s Resources?