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The human population has grown exponentially over the past century and is expected to increase to nine or ten billion by the year 2050 (Evans, 1998). This growth has been accompanied by an increasing rate of consumption of natural resources (Brown & Kane, 1994, Brown, 2009a,b). On several key resources, the use of materials and energy has increased faster than the population growth alone. At present, humans are challenging planetary boundaries and capacities (Humphreys et al., 2003, Rockstrom et al., 2009). For many fossil resources (energy, most metals and key elements), the rate of extraction is now so high that it can only with difficulty be further increased (Hubbert, 1956, Pogue & Hill, 1956, Ehrlich et al., 1992, Smil, 2001, 2002, Fillipelli, 2002, 2008, Greene et al., 2003, Arleklett, 2003, 2005, Hirsch et al., 2005, Gordon et al., 2006, Heinberg, 2007, Zittel & Schindler, 2007, Roskill Information Services, 2007a,b,c,d, 2008, 2009a,b, 2010a,b,c, 2011, Strahan, 2007, 2008, Ragnarsdottir et al., 2011, Sverdrup & Ragnarsdottir, 2011). In many cases, known resources are dwindling, because prospecting cannot find more. There have been several earlier warnings about the prospect of upcoming future material scarcity (Forrester, 1971, Meadows et al., 1972, 1992, 2004, Graedel & Allenby, 1995), though these have been seen as “interesting”, but have generally been shrugged off as academic studies. In the years after world war II, there has been a redefinition of success and wealth to imply increased consumption and material through-put (Friedman, 1962, Friedman & Friedman, 1980, Jackson, 2009). This success, reported as gross national product (GDP), has been adopted by most leaders of the world as a generic measure of success (growth), leading to enormous flows of materials, and as a result, waste. Fossil fuels are arguably the most essential modern commodity that may become scarce during the coming decades (Hubbert, 1966, 1972, 1982, Hirsh, 1992, Graedel et al., 1995, 2002, 2004), but rare minerals and metals, used, for example, in mobile phones, are also not in unlimited supply (Cohen, 2007, Ragnarsdottir, 2008). New technologies, such as transistors, pin-head capacitors, compound semiconductors, flat-screen liquid-crystal displays, light emitting diodes, electric car batteries, miniature magnets and thin-film solar cells therefore need to be developed according to the long-term availability of their key material ingredients.

Assessing Long Term Sustainability of Global Supply of Natural Resources and Materials