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The Forum > Article Comments > The coming radical change in mining practice > Comments

The coming radical change in mining practice : Comments

By Simon Michaux, published 15/10/2013

Put these observable trends together and a compelling case can be made that our society is approaching an existential crisis that is systemic in nature and is in denial about the existence of that crisis.

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The party's over alright. And the implications for food security are huge. If Michaux is right when he says peak total energy is projected to be approximately in the year 2017, then we really had better start preparing as a society. Energy, after all, is what makes the world goes round, that is, it provides us with goods and especially food. We had better start reining in population growth before people starve.

The new Abbott Government and, in particular, Malcolm Turnbull, would do well to look at the graph with copper declining dramatically. Fibre optics, it would seem, was always the better option.
Posted by popnperish, Tuesday, 15 October 2013 8:15:09 AM
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My prediction

The coming epidemic (bird/pig flu, HIV, something completely new) will cause people to hide away as much as possible and as a result spend more time learning, thinking and organising via the internet which will lead to a new form of inclusive democracy that eschews the type of economy we now have for a more sustainable economy.
Think small craft type organisations making goods that last not throw away consumerism.
Intellectual property will be subsumed by crowd sourced and peer to peer methods of innovation and progress.
Co-operative businesses will out-compete large corporations (who will be desperately trying to hold onto the old ways) and governments will lose their power to NGOs, charities, online groups and people power.

The media, hollywood, the music industry and the churches will die out.

There will be less demand for resources(hence the original article is irrelevant), less waste, probably less people (many will die in the epidemic) and the planets climate will be harsher. People will think and behave differently. There will still be wealthy and wasteful people but most of us will be happy with a roof over our heads, food and an internet connection. Going out, traveling, congregating in large groups is likely to be seen as risky and we will happily forgo it all.

Since it is not the few well off that cause the problems of pollution, overcrowding, scarcity and climate change but the vast masses. When they start to live more sustainably then things really will change.

No one will find it too onerous, indeed many will find it comforting and civilised not to have to compete in what has become an unhealthy rat race of consumption and affluenza. The old ways and the old corporations will die(they already are) and be replaced by a less hierarchical, less centralised and less damaging system that will quite probably lead to many great advances. Pity about the environmental disasters that will inevitably come along as well.

Just my opinion but when it comes to the crunch history has shown that us humans usually get it right in the end.
Posted by mikk, Tuesday, 15 October 2013 9:16:16 AM
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Mikk

If you want internet connection then you want the minerals that make it happen, not least copper now the Liberals are in power and dispensing with fibre optics for copper in the NBN. And if you read the article, you'd know that the only way we're going to maintain copper supplies is by digging ever deeper and wider and using more energy and water to extract it. Energy, however, will peak in 2017. So yes, we do need a simpler life-style, permaculture and all that, but we'll be lucky to hang on to the internet unless we make some good long-term plans in energy and resource management.
Posted by popnperish, Tuesday, 15 October 2013 3:00:23 PM
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I think people will make the effort to hold on to things like the internet while happily letting go of other far more resource intensive activities, like flying, travel in general, consumption on all levels. This will leave plenty of resources for what people see as really important. Sustainable power and intelligent grids, telecommunications and connectivity, replacement logistics and supply chains to cater for the new way of doing things.

In some ways it all hinges on an epidemic happening and I think with current population and overcrowding it is inevitable. I dont know when but we have already been given a few warnings and there will probably be a few more. But as usual we as a species will ignore them and then it will be too late. Millions will die, in pain and agony and life as we know it will be transformed. Why do people always have to die before we do something?

Also as for copper I think you will find that you have to include almost all existing stocks as i believe it is the most valuable recycled commodity out there and recovery rates are very high and will stay that way into the future. Even more so if the price of copper keeps rising. I know my employers will be happy.

Not to mention the inevitability that we will have fibre no matter what the Luddites and penny pinchers (lol no pun intended) in the lieberal party do.
Posted by mikk, Tuesday, 15 October 2013 3:31:39 PM
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The author under-rates (ignores?) the way higher prices for energy make larger amounts of energy resources more economical to extract.

Also - due to the backhanded benefits of global warming - large areas of the Arctic are becoming economical for the extraction of oil and gas. Basically the ice is gradually melting making Arctic oil rigs and shipping to and from them economic propositions.

"The exploration of the Arctic for petroleum is more technically challenging than for any other environment. However, with increases in technology, continuing high oil prices and drastic melting of glaciers and ice due to global warming (making it easier to drill and explore), the region is now receiving the interest of the petroleum industry." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_exploration_in_the_Arctic

In any case minerals and energy resources have always been seen as high risk commodities. Prices changes leave predictions of permanent doom temporary.

Pete
Posted by plantagenet, Tuesday, 15 October 2013 4:55:03 PM
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What an enormous pity it was that Labor couldn’t see the necessity in steering its policy platform towards a sustainable Australia.

It was desperately seeking a major revamp. It had Gillard’s ‘sustainable Australia’ desire still prominently in their minds, which had been widely supported by the general community. And it has Bob Carr and Kelvin Thomson, who have both been very vocal on sustainability issues for a long time.

And yet it has gone with an absolutely entrenched same-old-continuous-growth, ‘big Australia’ advocate in Bill Shorten as their new leader, and just completely muffed the incredible chance it had to take Australian politics in the direction that it desperately needs to go.

And as for the Greens, which is the party that should have been howling ‘sustainability’ from the rooftops right from its inception, they’ve just completely foregone any real action on this; the most important green, environmental, economic and social issue of all.

So, one has got to wonder; what on earth is it going to take to get us to move in a meaningful way towards a sustainable future?

As Simon Michaux points out; crunch time approaches. It’s as obvious as dog-balls. And yet here we are, still blundering on with the same old approach, which might have worked well a few decades ago, but which hasn’t worked at all well for a long time, and which is just rapidly taking us towards this crunch point.
Posted by Ludwig, Tuesday, 15 October 2013 5:11:29 PM
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