GLOBAL RESOURCES ANALYSIS


SHORTAGES | ELEMENTS


Elements are more not renewable than anything else on the planet. Energy can be made renewable, but elements like iron, copper, zinc, lead can't be made renewable like energy can be. Elements are the real shortages of the future. Increasing world population and increasing world prosperity will push demand for elements continuous up, by continuous lower supply and continuous more difficult exploration. Below the graph of the nickel price. Nickel prices of $ 50.000 per ton ($ 50 per kilogram!) are the recent industry forecasts for coming year. Continuous rising prices of all elements is the result of these shortages. The average price rise of commodities in 2007 was even above 100% in one year. The element facet will demand a lot more space in all global product prices in the next years, which certainly will result in higher price rises for all global products than prosperity growth rates, pushing consumption to lower levels and slowing global economy growth by these element shortages. Element theft is becoming a special branch in small and big crime. It used to be a Middle Europe and an Emerging World problem, but in 2008 this is changed. In Holland people stole large quantities of copper from a new not used railroad that connects Holland with Germany. In the UK all old churches (of hundreds of years old) have these days roof surveillance cameras, otherwise they weren't to insure anymore for lead theft. Just take 5 minutes a Google on http://www.google.com/search?q=theft+lead and maybe replace lead also by other metals. Community centers (schools, churches, governmental buildings) are the easiest (and therefore first) targets, but what happen with domestic lead on houses if prices will rise much more higher than they are today is easy to guess. Element shortages will lead to a huge rise of glass technology. New types of glass will replace the elements as they are running out. But for now: elements shortages leads to high elements prices and every nation just pay the by supply/demand created market prices.


Author: Gijs Graafland


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