Your Share of the Worlds Resources

A couple of months ago, I discussed how much land each of us would have, if the global land mass was distributed evenly. Now, I'll look at some important natural resources.

Return of Investment
When discussing resources and reserves, it is very important to distinguish them. I'll illustrate with an apple tree that provide me with apples to eat.

The first apples that I pick are the big, juicy ones between one and two meters above the ground. Why those apples and not smaller, half rotten apples that lie on the ground or big apples five meters above the ground? The answer is Return of Investment. The effort (investment) of picking easily accessible, big and juicy apples is low and the returns are high.

When all the low-hanging fruit is taken, I'll pick the slightly smaller and non-perfect apples. The returns are diminishing and thus the Return of Investment falls. Perhaps, I decide to go for the high-altitude apples, taking a risk of falling, buying a ladder or asking a friend to help me. These activities increases the efforts and reduces the ROI further. Depending on my desire for apples and my willingness to provide effort, I will eventually conclude that the last apples are not worth the effort of picking them.

Reserves vs Resources
This example illustrates the terms Resources and Reserves. The resources are all apples that I guesstimate are in the tree. The reserves are the amount of apples that I'm willing to pick. This distinction is important and I personally mix up the terms all the time.

Mmm... reserves

The same goes for other goodies, such as pears, gold, iron ore, phosphor, lithium, neodymium and one of the most important resources in our lives: energy. Now, I can list some resources and your personal share.

I'll start with an extremely simplistic list of the most important ones:

• Oil is one of the most important goods and in the end of 2017, the reserves were almost 240 billion tonnes of oil. That makes 31 tonnes of oil per person. The global oil consumption is 4,6 billion tonnes of oil per year (600 kg per person and year). We are currently consuming 2% of the accessible oil per year. Since oil is so important, I'll discuss it more in future blog posts.
• Phosphorus is essential as a fertilizer for food production. The global reserves are estimated to some 70 billion tonnes (nine tonnes per person). With a consumption of 261 million tonnes per year, the reserves will last for 260 years.
• Neodymium is a good example of the difference between reserves and resources. It is used for magnets in mobile phones, wind turbines and microphones. Electric cars will need several kilograms of the metal. There is plenty of neodymium in the earth crust, but the concentration is too low to mine. The reserves is roughly one kg per person.

Let's return to your island of two hectares. You have 31 tonnes of oil, nine tonnes of phosphorus and one kilogram of neodymium. It would be wise not to extinguish those reserves and to think twice before destroying your island in order to get those resources. How would you handle the scarce resources and how much would you save for your children?

Sidenote 1:
I strongly recommend the European Commissions assessment of some critical resources.

Sidenote 2: 
I'll discuss my view on how long the most crucial resource will last (dividing reserves by consumption is not the answer!) in the next blog post. Until then, I strongly recommend the peak-oil book "Gratislunchen" by Therese Uddenfeldt. Unfortunately, that book is only available in Swedish as far as I know.

Sidenote 3: 
I haven't forgotten about my new years resolution. My current prediction for 2019 is 4,0 tonnes of CO2e, 200 kg above the target. I'm focusing on reducing my meat (beef) consumption, reducing the food waste, eating less candy and drinking less alcohol. Further, we have reduced the food waste.

We are reducing the electricity consumption by connecting the stereo, TV, DVD and PC/mobile chargers to a remote-controlled power switch. This makes it much easier to cut the power and reduce the stand-by power consumption.