Thanatia : the destiny of the Earth's mineral resources : a thermodynamic cradle-to-cradle assessment / Танатия: судьба минеральных ресурсов Земли: термодинамическая оценка от начала до конца

The extraction of fossil fuels and mineral resources has grown exponentially since the early 20th century and far from decelerating, it is expected to increase in the coming decades. “The Limits to Growth” (Meadows et al., 1972) already alerted that if demand of metals and fossil fuels maintained the same trend, mankind would sooner or later be close to collapse. The book provoked a strong controversy between those that considered that the Earth was plentiful of non-renewable resources (technooptimists) and those who believed in the need for a rational management of the planetary mineral endowment.
Forty years on society has experienced an unparalleled economic optimism (especially in the nineties and the first few years of the 21st century) and also the biggest economic crisis since the Wall Street crash in 1929. At the same time, computers, smartphones, the electric car, renewable energies, new materials and electronic appliances are renovating the optimism for a brighter future. Yet all these technoartifacts are deeply connected to the mineral endowment of the Earth. Elements like indium, gallium, germanium, rare earths, tantalum, zirconium, cobalt, tin, precious and platinum group metals, lithium, tellurium, phosphorous, etc, are profusely used without or with only minor recycling <...>