Material World: The Key Resources Underpinning Modern Economies
The Great Simplification #127 with Ed Conway
Today, I’m joined by economics journalist Ed Conway to focus on the six essential resources that underpin our modern economies – sand, salt, iron, copper, oil, and lithium - and dive into the (often unseen) environmental and human costs of extracting them, as well as the surprisingly fragile global supply chains they fuel.
In order to understand what possibilities – and dangers – may await us in the future, we need to understand the realities and constraints of the present, as well as the fail points of the past. What does it take to mine, refine, and transform the materials that are foundational to the world around us - which many of us now take for granted? How can we ensure the stability of global supply chains, and could we predict potential disruptions and chokepoints before they arise? If we understood the intricate web of complexity, energy, and resources that go into everything we consume, would it change our expectations for how much we need in order to live a good and fulfilling life?
In case you missed it…
This week, I gave a talk on behalf of the Environmental Studies Association of Canada for 10,000 professors. At 1 hour 46 minutes, this keynote presentation is the most comprehensive outlining of the human predicament we've done to date, making it a great place to jump in.
The talk is in four parts:
1) an explanation of the core drivers of the human ecosystem
2) a synthesis of how the emergent property of these is a (mindless) energy/material hungry economic superorganism
3) scenarios and implications for the future
4) suggested interventions and responses at various scales (global, community, academia and personal)
There are over 200 million college students in the world. What are we teaching them and what curriculum will be more appropriate for the world we're heading into?
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Ed Conway has the problem of being an industry spokesman, fully captured by a viewpoint that cherishes the alleged wonders of the past and the alleged cornucopian wonders that industry will arrange for the future - and Nate will never challenge an establishment journalist like Conway.
In manufacturing, companies are using regulatory compliance certificate and material disclosures as detection tools for global sourcing constraints.
For example, send out a query to comply with Dodd-Frank conflict minerals, which also acts as a query to determine if the products contain 3T&G. Then make decisions internally to either discontinue use of the product and find a replacement.