CHAPTER

Future Resources
The search for resources is being carried out under increasingly difficult conditions.
Drilling for oil occurs from a synthetic ice island anchored to the floor of the Arctic
Ocean off the coast of Alaska. The island was constructed to prevent the drill rig
from being damaged by floating ice. (Courtesy of Exxon Corporation.)
A transition is underway to a world in which human populations are more crowded,
more consuming, more connected, and in many parts, more diverse, than at any
time in history. Current projections envisage population reaching around 9 billion
people in 2050 and leveling off at 10 to 11 billion by the end of [this century] . . . .
Meeting even the most basic needs of a stabilizing population at least half again as
large as today's implies greater production and consumption of goods and services,
increased demand for land, energy, and materials, and intensified pressures on the
environment and living resources. These challenges will be compounded to the
extent that the resource-intensive, consumptive lifestyles currently enjoyed by
many in the industrialized nations are retained by them and attained by the rest of
humanity. OUR COMMON JOURNEY: A TRANSITION TOWARD SUSTAINABILITY, U.S.
NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, 1999.
FOCAL POINTS Rising World population, projected to reach 9.5 billion by 2050 and
11 billion to 12 billion by 2100, technological advances, economic factors, and
social pressures will determine future resource requirements. Gradual exhaustion
of the most accessible "mineral" deposits in the most developed countries will
require exploration and exploitation in more remote areas and deeper within Earth's
crust. The exhaustion of easily accessible rich deposits, coupled with better
recovery technologies, will require and permit the exploitation of lower-grade
deposits. Fossil fuels will continue to serve as Earth's primary energy sources
through the first half of the twenty-first century, but shrinking reserves, higher
costs, and environmental concerns will promote the
development and use of alternative energy sources such as nuclear, solar, wind,
and biofuels. Nuclear energy will be phased out in some countries, but will be
embraced as an increasingly important source of electricity in others. Because it
does not contribute to atmospheric carbon dioxide, nuclear energy is viewed by
many as an acceptable replacement for fossil fuelgenerated electricity. a The
reserves of the abundant metals and materials derived from common rocks are so
large as to be effectively inexhaustible. The geochemically scarce metals will
continue to play vital roles in new technologies. Their reserves are adequate for at
least the first half of the twenty-first century, and greater quantities will be recycled.
459
460 Part 6 Water and Soil for Life Support Fertilizer, chemical, and building
materials exist in large quantities, and reserves will be adequate for many years.
Nevertheless, there are increasing concerns about secondary effects associated
with their exploitation and use, such as surface runoff and water contamination. The

oceans and saline lakes will serve increasingly as sources of chemical minerals.
Population growth will require greater use of surface waters and groundwaters, and
will likely cause conflicting demands for water use. There will be increasing debate
about the use of dams to
INTRODUCTION
The uses of renewable and nonrenewable natural resources are intimately
intertwined. The rapidly growing world population, along with rising stan-dards of
living, result in demands for more and more resources. At the same time, there is a
rising concern about the environmental impact of resource usage and calls for the
preservation of pristine natural areas of the planet. For soil and water, the resource
question is quite clearwe must learn to live with what we have. For other
resources, and especially metallic ores, the case is not so cleat Our society's use of
resources has developed through a combination of technological advances,
economic opportunity, and social accept-ance. Undoubtedly, changes will occur in
the future in response to technological innovations, economic de-velopments, or
social pressures. Because we cannot predict these changes, we cannot foresee
exactly how the use of resources will change. Some mineral resources may become
1, pry expensive, and others may become abundant and inexpensive. Often the
best projections for the near future are based upon the consumption figures of the
recent past; Figure 13.1 shows resource usage by the United States through the
twentieth century and points strongly to continued increasing levels of resource
demand in the twenty-first century. Recessions such as the one that began in 2007
briefly reduce the demand for some resources, but it is clear that overall demand
will continue to in-crease through the first half of the twenty-first century.
FUTURE MINERAL RESOURCES
Important questions that arise include: "Are there enough mineral resources to
meet the future needs? Will the resources be readily available and inexpen-sive? In
exploiting and utilizing these resources, will we permanently alter the Earth's
climate or pollute the Earth so much that it becomes uninhabitable?" The answer to
the first question is clearly yes. The
control sources of water and provide environmentally friendly hydroelectric power
versus their potential damage to the environment caused by altering natural
waterways. Desalinization of seawater and construction of water-transportation
systems will increase as needs for freshwater increase. Technological innovation
will reduce the demands for some resources much used today, while creating needs
for other new or hitherto little-used resources. Efforts to develop "sustainability"
will promote ever-greater recycling and reuse of many resources.
answer to the second question is more complex. Even when global supplies of
materials are vast, or even in-exhaustible, individual deposits are smaller and finite
in size. Water and air are rapidly recycled and are constantly renewed, but most
mineral resources occur in fixed amounts in any location and can become de-pleted.
Every mine is eventually exhausted and every oil well eventually runs dry. The
history of human us-age of resources has been to exploit them until they are used

up and then to move on to a new site or to develop some infrastructure to convey

some more of the resource to where it is needed. The future will, in many ways, be
the same; but what we use, how much we use, and where we use it will continually
change. The answer to the third question is likely regional in scope. By 2010, the
clearly measurable increase in the CO2 content of the atmosphere appears to be
causing an increase in the overall surface temperature of the Earth and altering
precipitation patterns. We have also seen an increase in the number and size of
areas that are so polluted that they will not sustain human inhabitants. Mineral
resources were formed through geologi-cal and geochemical cycles that commonly
operated over millions of years; human exploitation of these re-sources follows
cycles that are usually measured in tens of years (see Chapter 3, Figure 3.10). Most
European countries that have been industrialized for several centuries no longer
produce any of the scarce metals. Their mines are either closed or closing be-cause
the ores have been depleted. Additionally, envi-ronmental concerns and other social
pressures have caused some mines to shut down prematurely or pre-vented
exploration to discover otherwise economic deposits. The pattern observed for
Europe and for the United States can be seen in other parts of the world. However,
many other countries, such as Australia and Brazil, are still in the period of active
exploration for mineral deposits exposed at the surface or buried by only a shallow
soil cover. European nations, and increasingly the United States and Japan, have
MILLION METRIC TONS
800
600
400
200
0
Chapter 13 Future Resources 461
UUUUU
Industrial minerals Recycled metals Primary metals Nonrenewable organics
Recycled paper Primary paper Wood products Agriculture
1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1995 FIGURE 13.1 The quantities
of raw materials consumed in the United States during the twentieth century
increased more than tenfold and project to additional large increases in demand
during the twenty-first century. (Most recent diagram, from the U.S. Geological
Survey 2008.)
responded to a shortage of materials from their own mines by importing the balance
required from coun-tries where ore deposits are still being discovered and
developed. This pattern will likely continue for the next quarter century or more
because there are still large areas of the continental crust that have not been
intensively prospected. The day will come, however, when all of the easily

accessible deposits will have been found. Where will we turn then? The challenge
will probably be met in several ways, some of which might seem unlikely or even
unreasonable by present-day standards. For exam-ple, lands previously considered
off-limits, such as Antarctica, will be explored and may eventually be mined. Mining
is already being carried out in Greenland and in the islands north of the Arctic Circle
in Canada. This is being done under condi-tions of extreme difficulty (Figure 13.2). It
would be a relatively small step to use similar techniques in Antarctica. Another
step will surely be to explore the ocean floor. Manganese nodules are widely distributed on the deep seafloor and certain types of metal deposits form along the
mid-ocean ridges at water depths in excess of 1500 meters (4500 feet). The
deposits found so far are mostly small and mainly of scientific interest. Within the
geological record, however, other kinds of deposits seem to have formed through
the same submarine processes. This makes it likely that continuing ex-ploration of
the seafloor will reveal some of these
deposits. Someday they and the manganese nodules will be mined. In a sense, we
can conceive of the seafloor as another continent to explore for miner-als, just like
Antarctica. The difficulty of working in such inhospitable places means that we are
likely to seek only the richest and largest ore bodies in such environments. A more
likely place in which to seek the ores of the future is the deeper parts of the
continents. Other than the drilling of an actual test borehole, even the most
sophisticated techniques used today cannot lo-cate ore deposits beneath 500
meters (1500 feet) of bar-ren rock. We believe that more deposits are there to be
discovered because a few have been uncovered by ac-cident or brilliant deduction;
also, many deposits ex-tend down several thousand meters in depth and are only
exposed at the surface because random erosion has uncovered them.
Unfortunately, that knowledge provides little help in finding deeply buried deposits
(Figure 13.3). Here, obviously, is a circumstance where technological developments
might be expected to play an important role. Already, several countriesRussia, the
United States, Canada, and France among themhave pro-grams of varying
intensity aimed at developing a three-dimensional picture of Earth's crust through
new seismic, electrical, and magnetic exploration techniques (Figure 13.4) and
drilling programs. These special programs are only the start of what someday will
probably be full-scale attempts to map
462 Part 6 Water and Soil for Life Support
FIGURE 13.2 Mining under difficult conditions. (a) The ore bodies of the Black Angel
Mine in Greenland were found beneath a glacier. The mine openings were cut in a
vertical cliff wall high above a fjord; all people and materials were transported by a
cable system that extended across the fjord. The only water available for use in the
mine is seawater, which required special corrosion-resistant equipment.
(Photograph by F. M. Vokes.) (b) The Red Dog Mine, north of the Arctic Circle in
Alaska, is one of the largest and richest zinc mines in the world. Mining is being
carried out in open pits exposed to some of the worst weather on Earth, illustrating
the need to go to regions of hostile climates to satisfy our need for metals.
(Photograph courtesy of Jim Kulas, Cominco, Inc.)

(a)
(b)
100 \ \ 80 1 4 St ratiform 1 1 0 60 4 -- Massive sulfide
20
I 11 1 1 1 1
1
1
Porphyry
N1000 2000 Depth (ft) FIGURE 13.3 The probability that an ore deposit can be found
decreases with depth. A probability of 100for ore deposits outcropping at the
surfacemeans certain discovery. A probability of 50 means that half of such
deposits can be found. A stratiform deposit, because of its shape, is more likely to
be found at low depth than a porphyry copper deposit of the same size.
3000
Chapter 13 Future Resources 463 details of Earth's crust down to 10,000 meters
(30,000 feet) or more. When that has been done, a new fron-tier, larger than the
surface of all continents, will have been opened. No one can say when, or if, we will
be able to explore and mine the crust at great depths, but some believe that we
might start doing so within the next twenty to thirty years. The first deep
discoveries might be made in Australia and the coun-tries of Europe and North
America, where deep map-ping is being carried out. Exploitation of many deep
deposits will be in truly hostile environments. The extremes of temper-ature and the
dangers of high pressure will require some new, likely robotic, mining technologies
(Figure 13.5). The great expense will limit such min-ing to the richest deposits and
may be dependent on some significant increase in the costs of the materials
recovered. Because of technological advances in mining and recovery techniques,
we now mine large quantities of ores once considered as waste. This is evidenced
by the decreases in the grades of copper and gold ores exploited from 1900 to 2000
(see Figures 8.2 and 8.31). Further technological ad-vances will probably push
mineable grades lower, but we must realize that we are approaching the lim-its
where the added amount of metal recovered will no longer pay for the added cost of
processing the ore. We will have reached the mineralogical barrier. To transgress
that barrier and mine scarce metals
FIGURE 13.4 Modern seismic imaging techniques permit three-dimensional
modeling of the subsurface, which greatly increases the probability of finding an oilbearing reservoir or an ore body. (Courtesy of Magic Earth LLC.)
464 Part 6 Water and Soil for Life Support

(a)
FIGURE 13.5 The Grasberg Mine, located at 14,000 feet (4300 m) elevation in the
remote mountains of Irian Jaya, Indonesia, is an example of the efforts of mining
companies to meet the ever growing demand for metals (see also Plate 37). (a) The
HEAT (Heavy Equipment Access Trail) road had to be cut into steep jungle-covered
mountain slopes to provide a way to bring the large mining equipment to the mining
site. (b) Mining to meet future needs will generally be carried out on massive scales
using extremely large equipment such as this huge power shovel at the Grasberg
Mine, where more than 500,000 tons of rock are mined and processed every day.
(Photographs courtesy of Freeport McMoRan, Copper & Gold, Inc.)
held in solid solution in common minerals will be extremely expensive (Figure 13.6).
The pattern shown in Figure 13.6 is conjecture, of course, but even if it is wrong in
detail, it highlights an impor-tant factorrecovery of scarce metals will inevitably
(b)
be more difficult and expensive Examples of large, low-grade deposits are certain
black shales that are not only rich in organic matter, but have relatively high
contents of metals such as copper, uranium, cobalt, and zinc. Other examples
in the future_
107 0 0 0 .o 106 55. a) C 105
104
0.001 0.01 0.1 Grade (percent) FIGURE 13.6 A hypothetical depiction of copper
production in the centuries ahead. When the rich sulfide ores have been depleted,
manganese nodules may be exploited. Some nodules contain more copper than
certain sulfide ores, but the cost of recovery is higher for nodules. As nodules are
mined, copper-rich deep-sea muds may also be worked; only as a last resort would
common rocks, such as basalts, be considered as sources of metals.
1
10
include certain large igneous intrusions, such as the Duluth Gabbro in Minnesota,
which contains massive tonnages of very low-grade nickel and cop-per resources.
The large, low-grade deposits are re-ally like most other mineral deposits, i.e., small,
chemically anomalous volumes of Earth's crust.
THE ENVIRONMENT IN THE FUTURE
The large growth of human population in the twenty-first century will demand more
and more living space, water, energy, and mineral resources. At the same time, the
activities required to meet those needs, along with the human activities of daily life,
will place greater and greater pressures on the natural environment and will likely
increase pollution of the Earth's atmosphere and waters. As the human population
increases, there will be a corresponding decrease in wildlifea sort of "zero sum

game" in which each new person equates to one or more fewer animals. Wildlife will
increasingly be confined to game reserves and zoos. The environmental factor of
greatest general concern will likely be that of global warming. Unless there are
major governmental commitments and co-operative international agreements to
reduce carbon emissions, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels will continue to
increase as they did during the latter parts of the twentieth century and first ten
years of the twenty-first century. This will contribute significantly
Chapter 13 Future Resources 465 to the warming of Earth's atmosphere and the
broad spectrum of resulting consequences from sea level rise to shifting
precipitation patterns. There will be more calls for reductions of our individual
"carbon footprints" and increasing conflicts between the demands for resources
(especially energy) and the de-mands of conservationists pushing for environmental
cleanup and set-aside areas for preserving wildlife.
METALS FOR THE FUTURE
Abundant Metals
Iron and aluminum have become the principal metals for the construction and
transportation industries and the manufacture of many other products that are regarded as essential to our lives, and they will continue to remain so. The reserves of
these metals are vast, the technologies for their extraction are well developed, their
costs are low compared with other metals, and the infrastructure for their supply
and recycling is in place and efficient. There are no metals that could be substituted
for them in a cost-efficient manner. The other abundant metals--4ilicon, magnesium,
man-ganese, titaniun)-also have large reserves and estab-lished use patterns that
will continue. Silicon has an especially bright future because it will likely continue as
the dominant material needed to manufacture the solar cells that can directly
generate electricity.
Scarce Metals
The scarce metals will continue to serve in myriad uses in the twenty-first century.
Some, such as copper, plat-inum, and beryllium, will likely expand in use associated with new electronics industry innovations, while others, especially lead and
mercury, will likely see de-creasing usage because of their negative environmental
impact. Reserves of the scarce metals, thought to be running out twenty-five years
ago, have grown to all-time high levels. This has resulted from better geologic
knowledge (in part, due to theories such as plate tecton-ics), increased
understanding of ore-forming processes, advances in the technologies of recovery,
and increased recycling. The precious metals will hold their allure in jewelry and
value in monetary terms, and will likely see growth in technological applications.
Ferro-alloy metals will become more important as new alloys are developed. Special
metals will likely see many new ap-plications in the growing world of electronic
devices. In summary, the needs for metals will remain high, with traditional uses
dominating the early parts of the twenty-first century. These uses will be accompanied by new technological applications, and per-haps partly supplanted by new

technology. The strength and versatility of metals will ensure the major role of
metals in society for the foreseeable future.
466 Part 6 Water and Soil for Life Support
FERTILIZERS AND CHEMICALS FOR THE FUTURE
The growth of world population will require a large in-crease in the use of fertilizers
to sustain both old and new types of food crops and to ensure their increased
produc-tivity. Nitrogen supplies from Earth's atmosphere are in-exhaustible, but they
do require significant amounts of energy (usually as natural gas) in order to be
converted into usable forms. Marine potassium and phosphate deposits are
extensive and sufficient to meet world needs far into the twenty-first century.
Furthermore, the oceans and some saline lakes and seas contain large quantities of
FIGURE 13.7 (a) The large brine recovery plant at the Great Salt Lake. Brine
evaporation ponds are visible in the background. A section of the Great Salt Lake
has been isolated by dikes to permit solar evaporation to concentrate the salts for
recovery. (b) Salt recovery from an evaporation site in the Great Salt Lake. Once
evaporation has removed the water, the salts are scooped up and removed prior to
allowing in a new flood of brine to begin the process again. (Photographs courtesy
of Great Salt Lake Minerals and Chemicals Corporation.)
dissolved salts that can be readily extracted (Figure 13.7). High-grade phosphate
reserves are large; furthermore, there are huge amounts of lower-grade ores that
could be ultimately exploited, both on the continents and on the continental
shelves. Chemical mineral reserves, in general, are known in large quantities and
will be available to meet future needs. Salt deposits are accessible in many areas,
and the oceans contain inexhaustible supplies. Natural sul-fur deposits are large,
but our continued reliance on fossil fuels for energy and sulfide ores for metals will
yield by-product sulfur in huge quantities. Beyond
(a)
(b)
that, the oceans contain vast quantities of dissolved sulfur. The total magnitude of
fertilizer and chemical minerals presents no problem for meeting world needs in the
twenty-first century. A major concern, however, arising from the increasing use of
fertilizers has been the discovery of extensive "dead zones" developing where major
rivers, such as the Mississippi, carry the fertilizer nutrients into the oceans.
BUILDING AND INDUSTRIAL MATERIALS FOR THE FUTURE
Earth contains such a variety of building and indus-trial minerals, in such wide
distribution and large quantities, that they will always be available. Local shortages
can result from very high demand or from the public desire to limit the exploitation
of source areas. This will happen increasingly as population centers encroach on
quarries and force the quarries to relocate to more rural and distant sites. This will
in-crease transportation costs for the products but will not seriously limit their
availability. Natural materials such as dimension stone and marble will continue to

compete with synthetic materials such as concrete, ceramics, glass, and plastics.
Materials such as as-bestos will be increasingly replaced by synthetic alter-natives
because of their threat to human health. Gem synthesis, already a large business,
will increase, and synthetic diamonds will find new technological appli-cations and
may begin to compete with natural stones in the jewelry trade.
ENERGY FOR THE FUTURE
Fossil Fuels
There is broad agreement that the major fossil fuelspetroleum, coal, and natural
gaswill continue to serve as the world's principal energy sources in the first
quarter to first half of the twenty-first century. America's reliance on fossil fuels for
85 percent of its energy needs is predicted by the Energy Information Agency to
drop to about 79 percent by 2030. The slow-ness of change results from the large
infrastructure of mines, wells, pipelines, refineries, power plants, and service
stations associated with the fossil fuel indus-tries, and the billion or so gasoline or
diesel vehicles in the world. At the same time, it is clear that changes, small and
slow at first, are coming. Despite new explo-ration and recovery techniques, it is
likely that world production of petroleum and natural gas will peak in the next
twenty-five years. Even so, there are great concerns that the environmental impact
of burning fossil fuels are irreversibly altering the carbon dioxide content of the
atmosphere and accelerating global warming. Rising prices for oil, projected to
reach $130
Chapter 13 Future Resources 467 (in 2007 dollars) per barrel by 2030, combined
with new technologies, will continue to change some "re-sources" into "reserves";
this was exemplified by the change in the status of the tar sands of western Canada
in the early years of the twenty-first century. OPEC will continue to control most of
the world's easily extractable petroleum, and countries such as the United States
will continue to rely heavily upon imported oil. The primary end product made from
oil will likely still be gasoline for motor vehicles because it is the fuel that contains
the greatest energy per unit volume and it is convenient to supply to the user.
Throughout the 1990s and early years of the twenty-first century, American car
manufacturers concen-trated on larger, heavier, and more powerful but less fuel
efficient vehicles, whereas European and Asian manufacturers built smaller, more
fuel efficient vehi-cles. The erratic nature of the price of gasoline after 2005, with a
brief rise to more than $4.00 per gallon in 2008, sent shockwaves through America
and focused interest on smaller, more fuel efficient cars, including electric and
hybrid models. The Energy Information Agency projects a significant increase in the
numbers of flex fuel (able to use more than one kind of liquid fuel), hybrid (able to
run on liquid fuel or electricity), and electric cars in the next twenty years. Biofuels
production will likely increase to provide approxi-mately 15 to 20 percent of vehicle
fuel needs.
Nuclear Power for the Future
At the end of the twentieth century, the aging of America's 100 nuclear power
plants and the failure of the federal government to settle on the site for a long-term,

high-level waste repository, seemed to point to a gradual shutdown of nuclear

power in the United States. Several countries, such as Germany and Sweden,
appeared to be heading in the same direction. In contrast, other countries, such as
France, Japan, and China, planned to use nuclear power as their primary electricity
source. However, the increase in environmental concerns about rising carbon
dioxide levels in the at-mosphere and consequent global warming, have led to a
reconsideration of nuclear power as a viable major electricity source in the United
States through the twenty-first century. Unfortunately, the problem of high-level
nuclear waste disposal still looms, and with no resolution in sight. Nuclear fusion,
despite many claims that it will one day provide all of the world's energy, just as it
now provides the sun's energy, is still in its infancy. There is no expectation that it
will become commer-cially available in the first half of the twenty-first century.
468 Part 6 Water and Soil for Life Support
RENEWABLE ENERGY FOR THE FUTURE
The "greening" of society, especially in the most de-veloped countries, has led to
increased interest in, and development of, renewable energy. This has been driven
by fears over finite fossil fuel supplies, in-creased foreign dependency for fossil fuel
supplies, er-ratic and sometimes high fossil fuel costs, and global warming due to
rising carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere. The "green" renewables
hydroelectric, solar, wind, geothermal, biofuel, ocean, and hydrogen powerare all
growing on a worldwide basis, but they will not likely overtake the fossil fuels and
nu-clear power as the world's major energy sources until after 2025. The "green"
nature of hydroelectricity (with no gases or radiation being released) is now
overshad-owed in some countries (such as the United States) by environmental
concerns related to the alteration of river systems and the impact on fish migration.
Hence, numerous dams have now been removed from American rivers and no new
ones are planned. In con-trast, other countries, such as Canada, Repubic of the
Congo, China, and Brazil, are in the planning or con-struction phases of major
hydroelectric facilities that are expected to provide a major contribution to their
electricity needs. Solar energy has been increasing rapidly, but it remains a very
small contributor to overall electricity supplies. Improved efficiency of solar cells
and inno-vative construction designs that build solar cells into roofs will
undoubtedly spur increased solar energy production. Wind generation of electricity
has been the most rapidly growing renewable energy source and is likely to grow
even faster in the next twenty-five years.
FIGURE 13.8 The Pretonius platform, in the Gulf of Mexico, constructed between
1995 and 2000, illustrates the great efforts to which oil companies must now go to
find, extract, and produce oil and gas from ever more remote sites. The platform,
built by Texaco Inc. and Marathon Oil Company, is 2001 feet (610 m) tall, sits in
1724 feet (525 m) of water located 130 miles (208 km) southeast of New Orleans,
and is the world's tallest free-standing structure. It has a production capacity of
60,000 barrels of oil and 100-million cubic feet of natural gas per day and is
producing from a field estimated to contain 80- to 100-million barrels of oil
equivalent. (Photograph courtesy of Texaco Inc.)

Although some large windmills have been criticized for killing migratory birds, it
appears that warning systems and careful siting of the windmills (including offshore)
should minimize these problems. Innovative designs continue to provide increased
efficiency, but there is continuing opposition to windmill farms on the basis of
aesthetics. Overall, there are optimistic projections of wind-generated electricity
providing 20 percent of America's needs by 2025. Geothermal energy will continue
to grow slowly. but it will remain limited geographically. Ocean gener-ated energy
will similarly be restricted to a few coastal sites and will only grow slowly. Biofuels,
especially alcohol bio-diesel, have seen much expansion since 2000 and are
expected to con-tinue to grow. There are, however, concerns about the feedstocks
cutting into world food supplies and of en-vironmental problems. Undoubtedly, the
production of biofuels will increase markedly, and is projected to reach as much as
15 percent of vehicle fuel needs by about 2030. The primary driving forces for
biofuel pro-duction will be the cost of petroleum and the desire to reduce world
emissions of carbon dioxide. Hydrogen as a significant transporation fuel will remain
a future prospect for many years to come. The difficulty and danger inherent in its
generation, distri-bution, and use will restrict it to a "novelty" fuel for the near
future. Broad expansion of renewable energy sources will require the combined
support of the public and of worldwide governments. The United States gover-ment,
at one time a leader in this area, made only modest progress for the first eight
years of the twenty-first century, even failing to sign on to the Kyoto Protocol (an
international agreement concening the
limiting of emission of greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide). However, as
we move into the second decade of the twenty-first century, there seems to be a
renewed interest and support for the development of renewable energies, in
participating in international energy agreements, and whatever treaties follow the
Kyoto Protocol when it expires in 2012. The European Union reiterated a path to a
low carbon economy in 2008 when it stated its "20-20-20" targets: 20 percent
reduction of greenhouse gases and 20 percent energy produced from renewables,
all by the year 2020.
WATER AND SOIL FOR THE FUTURE Although Earth is a water planet, with 70
percent of its surface covered with oceans, the significant problem of insufficient
potable water is being experienced in many places. Water is vital for life and there
is no substitute; hence, we must either restrict our activities to areas with sufficient
water or we must construct an infra-structure to deliver the water where we want it.
Growing populations and the resulting food require-ments will force us to build more
transport and purifi-cation systems to population centers and to agricultural regions.
Waste water recycling will become more com-mon and irrigation systems more
efficient. The increase in demand for water will stress some surface-water sources,
continue to deplete groundwater supplies, and create more conflicts with
environmental water rights. Water will assume a growing political importance on all
scales from local to international as individuals and countries vie for surface and
groundwater supplies. The oceans represent the only inexhaustible supply, and we
shall inevitably expand desalinization projects, but these will require huge
expenditures of energy. We shall not run out of water, if for no other reason than we

can-not live without it. Water has been called "the most crit-ical resource" of the
twenty-first century. More cropland will be required to feed the nearly doubled'
world population by the end of this century. As the same time, some of the best
croplands have been lost to encroaching development or have suffered degradation
due to erosion. New lands are constantly being developed to replace lost ones and
to expand the total land available to grow crops, but these are gener-ally of lesser
quality than those lands lost and will require greater fertilization and irrigation to be
as pro-ductive. Furthermore, the development of new crop-lands commonly leads to
additional fragmentation of the world's remaining forests and grasslands and disrupts the environment for wild birds and animals.
TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION
Human history has witnessed increases in the number of individuals on the planet,
expansion in the amounts
Chapter 13 Future Resources 469 of mineral commodities used, and social
progress punctuated by the injection of new technological inno-vationsfire, the
wheel, steam engines, electricity, nu-clear power, and many others. The world's
population will likely grow to at least 11 billion people during the twenty-first
century and, based upon present technol-ogy, will demand nearly a doubling in the
supplies of every Earth resource. That projection is very simplistic and no doubt
somewhat inaccurate because we cannot easily envision the technological changes
ahead. The acceleration of technological change in the past twenty-five years has
surprised most of us, and imag-ining even more rapid change in the next twentyfive years is difficult. However, regardless of innovation, the world's demands for
energy, food, water, and material goods will be staggering and will call for
maximum, efficient, and innovative use of all of Earth's resources. An old but
elegant example of such use was the invention of the charcoal briquette that many
now use for barbecues. It resulted from the ap-plication of a simple, existing
technology to a com-mon, but incompletely used resource, by one of America's
most innovative geniuses, Henry Ford. Ford operated a saw mill in the hardwood
forests around Iron Mountain, Michigan, in the years prior to 1920, to make wooden
parts for his successful motor car (the Model T). Ford watched the growing piles of
wood scraps with distaste and sought a way to use them. Most charcoal available up
to that time was made in lumps. It was not uniform in size nor in heat output and
was used primarily as an industrial fuel or for home cooking in wood-burning stoves.
Ford's idea was to chip the wood into small pieces, and then, after the wood was
turned into charcoal, to grind it into a powder, add a binder, and compress the mix
into the now familiar pillow shape of the charcoal briquette. He called on his friend,
inventor Thomas Alva Edison (Figure 13.9), to design the plant. By early 1921,
Ford's plant was complete and in full operation, using every wood scrap generated
and even condensing the va-pors in the smoke. Power came from a Ford-built-andowned dam and hydroelectric facility nearby, and the wood by-products drawn off
during the charring process were run through a condenser to make ketones for
paints for Ford's cars and methanol for antifreeze. The bri-quettes were sold to
industry and later to the public through his automobile agencies. E. G. Kingsford, a
relative who owned one of Ford's earliest automobile sales agencies, was named

manager of the briquette operation. A company town was built nearby and named
Kingsford. This is the origin of the name Kingsford on one of the present-day popular
brands of briquettes. On the broader scale, the resources and the needed inventive
genius are still available. Even so,
470 Part 6 Water and Soil for Life Support
FIGURE 13.9 Henry Ford and his associates who were responsible for producing the
first charcoal briquettes. From the left, Harvey Firestone, Henry Ford, Thomas Alva
Edison, and E. G. Kingsford, the first manager of the briquetting plant. The
development of the briquettes is an example of making maximum use of a resource.
(Courtesy of the Kingsford Products Company, a subsidiary of the Clorox Company.)
the demands for, and use of, resources may still lead to dispute and conflict, as well
as to disruption of the land surface and the spaces in which we live. The chal-lenges
posed by the needs and aspirations of a world population of 11 billion or more
people, the uneven distribution of the natural resources required to meet their
needs, and the pressures on the environment as the resources are produced and
used, will make the next 100 years the most crucial and difficult ones the
human race has ever faced. Every detail of our societal needs for, and uses of,
resources will be examined and reexamined in the process. Perhaps, it is
appropriate to conclude this text with the reiteration of the simple statement that
"the Earth is our only home." None of us writing or reading this will ever live
anywhere elsewe will depend upon Earth for all of our resources and need to
maintain it as a suitable habitat for ourselves and our descendents.