Difference between revisions of "Material/Intro"

[[Image:Air sea and land.jpg|right|120px|Atmosphere, hydrosphere and lithosphere (a.k.a. air, sea and land)]] Air, water and the twenty most abundant elements in the Earth's crust provide almost all the material needed to create the multitude of machines and goods that mankind requires: food, drugs, houses, vehicles, robots, industrial machinery, computers, consumer goods and so on.

[[Image:Air sea and land.jpg|right|120px|Atmosphere, hydrosphere and lithosphere (a.k.a. air, sea and land)]] Air, water and the twenty most abundant elements in the Earth's crust provide almost all the material needed to create the multitude of machines and goods that mankind requires: food, drugs, houses, vehicles, robots, industrial machinery, computers, consumer goods and so on.

Extracting these plentiful elements (and their compounds) to create useful material essentially involves [[Fundamental resources/Energy|energy]] (which is also plentiful) and the right processing methods. From a technical point of view there is practically no limit to the volume of material we could extract and make use of, if we so wished, even while minimally disrupting complex and fragile ecosystems. The reserves of raw materials needed to sustain civilisation are simply not going to run out, because the entire {{wp|Lithosphere|Earth's crust}} is made up of them. However this is no excuse to be unnecessarily wasteful in our consumption. The point is that any existing material scarcity actually has little to do with the reserves at our disposal.

Extracting these plentiful elements (and their compounds) to create useful material essentially involves [[Fundamental resources/Energy|energy]] (which is also plentiful) and the right processing methods. From a technical point of view there is practically no limit to the volume of material we could extract and make use of, if we so wished, even while minimally disrupting complex and fragile ecosystems. The reserves of raw materials needed to sustain civilisation are simply not going to run out, because the entire {{wp|Lithosphere|Earth's crust}} is made up of them. However this is no excuse to be unnecessarily wasteful in our consumption. The point is that any existing material scarcity actually has little to do with the reserves at our disposal.