Today, stealing copper is a major business at unprotected work sites. Lead (batteries) aluminum (even cans), copper and brass, as well as iron, no matter how rusty, are eagerly sought for recycling.

Phosphorus exhaustion has been a worry for decades. At least one war has been fought over it. Chromium was always rare. During the Cold War the U. S. wouldn’t buy it from the U. S. S. R, the principal source. So it went to South Africa, which mined some chromium, and the South African and U. S. S. R. chromium were combined and sent to the U. S. for our huge, gas guzzling cars.

Resource exhaustion has been on the mind of many wise people for some time, but now we are staring it the face for many minerals. The expanding population and the increasing affluence of at least some people in all countries is a big factor, too.

“If we insist in investing most of what remains for fossil fuels; then we are truly doomed. Yet I think that we still have time to manage the transition. To counter depletion, we must invest a substantial amount of the remaining resources in renewable energy and efficient recycling technologies – things which are not subjected to depletion. And we need to do that before is too late, that is before the energy return on investment of fossil fuels has declined so much that we have nothing left to invest.”