Earth Resources §

Underground Resources §

Precious Metals §

• Only 8 precious metals in the world: $15T worth
  • Platinum: rarest, used in products
  • Silver: coins, circuit boards, solar cells
  • Gold: found every continent
    • Most precious because its not used into anything other than for money
    • Gold never lose its value in financial crises
    • What do we do with gold we mine?
      • 10$ B on gold
      • 60% on jewlery
      • 140$ B just stored in federal reserves
        • India owns the most
      • Dentistry
      • Reflective for sattelite
      • Electronic devices
      • Biggest gold miners
        • China
        • Australia
        • US
      • 1/4 of gold still isn’t mined

Rocks §

• Rock endures for a long time
  • Sandstone
  • Granite: most beautiful than stone, hardest rock on earth $85T
    • Mount Rushmore
    • Stone Heng
    • Empire State Building
    • 42% of all construction stone
    • $500B tons
  • Limestone: softer than granite, versitile $8T
    • Highways, driveways, asphalt
    • Good mineral for your health consumption, toothpaste
    • $7/ton
    • Who: Spain India China Brazil

Base Metals §

• Base Metals $135T
  • Zinc: protective coating for other metals
  • Copper: made coins, conductive electronic equipments
  • Iron: almost all the Earth’s core is iron $109T
    • Steel: made from iron + carbon, spread industrial revolution
      • Built sky scrapers and higher buildings
      • Can be recycled endlessly, with no corrosion

Precious Stones §

• Precious Stones:
  • Gemstones:
    • Diamonds
      • Industrial use: diamond tipped drills, surgical sharpest tools, prevent overheating in micro-electronic products
      • Jewlery use
      • Australia, Congo, Russia
      • Price depends on
        • Cutting, polishing
        • Clarity, shine

Rare Earth Elements §

• Rare Earth elements: $24T
  • James Webs Telescope: use metals that works in near 0 kelvin temperatures
  • Problem: only small amount of places have enough rare earth concentration to mine
    • Brazil
    • India
    • China: 97.3% of all rare earth mined

Fossil Fuels §

• Fossile Fuels: remains of dead plants and animals compressed by heat and pressure in Earth’s crust for millions of years $716T
  • Crude oil: dense amount of energy stored
    • Used as Gasoline
    • Versitility: used in many things like fast food, soap, asprine
    • Saudi Arabia is biggest producer, Russia, US
    • US is biggest oil consumer
  • Shale Oil: oil in rocky cliffs that are hard to extract

Natural on land resources §

Timber §

• Timber is very valuable because it is useable for many things
  • 400B trees on earth as $269T
  • 80 year old trees 1000$ each
  • 80k a day felling
  • Who
    • US
    • India
    • China
  • Environmental Impacts
  • Trees are replanted when cut down
    • Enviromental replanting also helps the logging industry

Food §

• Food
  • Meat
  • Crops
    • Wheat
    • Rice
    • Corn: has starch, corn oil, and corn fluids
  • Seafood
    • Fish: 142M tons a year
      • Norway
      • Thailand

Water §

• Water:
  • Most are salt water or ice caps
  • Fresh Water: Lakes, most are Ground Water (difficult to reach)
  • Most of Water’s price is the cost of transferring it to people
    • Accessibility

Geopolitics and Involvement with IR §

• Scarcity makes conflict
  • Economic insecurity -> political insecurity
  • Geopolitical control of resources to infuence other states
• A super power must have access to these resources and able to restrict access to the rest of the world
• Why did US invade Iraq and not Saudi Arabia?
  • Company created years ago in partner between US and Saudi Arabia that is already exploiting the resources

References §

1. 2022-05-09’s documentary for IS409