Wishing for Collapse: The Unintended Path of Depletionism
Be careful with what you ask for. Because you might not be happy with what you get
In "The Monkey’s Paw" by W.W. Jacobs (1902), an elderly couple receives a magical monkey’s paw that grants three wishes. They wish for money, but it comes through their son’s death in an accident. Then, they ask to have their son back, but he comes in the form of a zombie. And they use their last wish to send the zombie back to its grave. It is a typical problem: when you ask for something, you never know what exactly you’ll get, and you may not like it. It is happening now for a group of “depletionists” who are loudly proclaiming that we are running out of vital mineral resources for the industrial system and that this factor is making the renewable transition impossible. They are correct in saying that mineral resources are limited, but if the message passes, the powers that be may decide to solve the problem in rather drastic and unpleasant ways.
This post is inspired by a talk I gave in Budapest at the World Adaptation Forum on April 25, 2025. h/t Balázs Stumpf-Biró.
It is said that George W. Bush Jr. decided to invade Iraq in 2003 because he had read some papers on oil depletion by the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO). Of course, it may be just a legend, but I don’t see it as impossible, and perhaps not even improbable. Politicians make decisions on the basis of vague ideas, often on the spur of the moment, and in many cases making terrible mistakes. But they normally understand some of the critical elements that keep alive the system. For the US, the critical resource was, and still is, crude oil. So, it is possible that Bush thought that it was necessary to compensate for the decline of the US oil production by seizing the Iraqi resources. That didn’t necessarily imply to start a war, just like filling the tank of your car doesn’t imply shooting dead the service station operator. But that’s the way some people’s minds work.
ASPO had a certain global clout during the first 1-2 decades of the century. It was created in 2001 by a group of oil geologists and I was part of it from the early years. The founder, Colin Campbell, came out with the expression “Peak Oil,” which became popular over the years. ASPO’s work was focused on determining when the global oil production peak would arrive, and which was supposed to lead to a disaster of global proportions. About what to do to avoid it, ASPO members were divided. Some saw a return to nuclear energy (mainly the French members), others a return to coal (the US ones), and a wide group thought of planned degrowth, socialism, green utopia, and the like.
We obtained exactly the opposite of what we proposed. Although Peak Oil was always denied and considered fringe opinions, people in the oil industry and in the financial/political world were acutely aware of the problem. Their reaction was predictable when you think in terms of profits. If oil is becoming scarce, then it will become more valuable. Hence, it makes sense to invest in it. So it was that huge (and I mean really huuuuge — Trump style) amounts of money were thrown at the idea of exploiting “tight oil,” better known today as “shale oil.” A resource that most oil geologists had always considered too expensive to exploit. But when money speaks, it is louder than the voice of scientists.
And so, shale oil was. Peak Oil was postponed by at least 10 years, although at a big cost for the economy and with huge (huuuge) damage to the ecosystem. The work of ASPO was consigned forever to the dustbin of wrong scientific theories. The peak may be coming now, and the subsequent collapse will be much faster than that of conventional oil. But what was done was done.
The interesting point of this story is how it is being repeated in a very similar form today. We are seeing a vocal group of people whom we can call “depletionists,” equivalent to the earlier “Peak Oilers” who claim that we are running out of some critical resources and that the whole system may collapse soon. I think I was one of the initiators of this movement of ideas with my book “Extracted,” which I published in 2014. The problem is the same as that of ASPO: the depletionists don’t have a solution except a set of vague ideas about happy degrowth, bicycling, cultivating vegetables in one’s garden, maybe adopting socialism, and a few more.
Admirable, but it won’t work.
Actually, it will badly backfire, especially if the depletionists continue their carpet bombing against renewable energy and electrification; the renewable transition. It is true that the transition requires mineral resources, but not necessarily rare ones, and their criticism is often shallow and sometimes plainly wrong. A takedown of their criticism can be read in a recent post by Nafeez Ahmed, “The Delusion of no Energy Transition.” But the worst problem is not so much the misunderstanding of the technical characteristics of renewable energy. It is the same problem we had with ASPO.
It is not enough to highlight a problem if you don’t propose actionable ways to solve it.
People need energy. People need electricity, shelter, transportation, and more. And, of course, food. Renewable energy doesn’t automatically provide all that, but it is a big help, especially for the poor. Just as an example, think about how badly air conditioning is needed in Southern countries nowadays. During heat waves, having air conditioned may mean the difference between life and death. PV panels can provide it at no cost during the hottest periods of the day, exactly when the panels work at the highest efficiency. And PV can provide food refrigeration, basic transportation, connections, and more.
But if you keep telling people that renewables are useless, people will search for something else, and, no, it will not be Socialism. It will be a new rush for impossible miracles (nuclear fusion), for whatever dirty things can be burned (coal), for destroying the ecosystem even more (bioenergy). And, if you really want to solve the problem in a drastic way, the rich can think of even worse things. They are perfectly capable of using depletion, real or claimed, as an excuse.
About these “worse things,” I won’t go into the details. Let me just show you the front cover of my latest book, and I leave it to you to understand where we may be going. Be careful with what you ask for, because you may get it in a form that you won’t like.
https://www.amazon.com/Exterminations-Ugo-Bardi/dp/B0DK18GP68/
You says that " transition requires mineral resources, but not necessarily rare ones". It might be true to some extend as it seems that some technologies might works well without the famous and so-called "rare earths".
But what is your opinion about copper ?
It is said that we will need a huge quantity of copper for an energy transition *at scale* based mainly on electrification. In any case much more than what have been extracted so far (making recycling a moot point at least for the time being).
Some say it is not so much a problem because this copper exists on earth and we will just have to extract it. And even if it might no be so easy, we will manage to do it by improving technologies and investing whatever money will be needed. They say it's a matter of political will. Especially if we decide we have no other choice. (Some even dream of mining asteroids in a not so distant future to sort out the matter but let's leave it at that)
But some say that whatever we decide, it's just no possible for quite a few reasons. First among them, it will means to open tens of new giant mines to extract ore showing a much too poor concentration. Making the whole process of moving so much rocks for so little way to expensive. And beside, too ecologically destructive to be rightfully imposed on local ecosystems and populations. Some say that we will not have enough cheap diesel to do so anyway (unless much of the copper and other ressources are diverted for electrification of copper extraction and refining, making the whole thing eating its own tail and loosing any practical use).
Funnily enough, I've read people rejoicing one week to the news that there is much enough copper on earth for any renewable transition we can dream of. If only we decide to extract it. And rejoicing the next week that some huge mine project in some distant tropical country was abandoned for the good of its poor local population. And say that they will never accept any such a destructive project near their own place either.
Which is of course, one more reason for me to lean for the second option... Which means that it only leave us with some degrowth of some sort. But it is something that the vast majority of people will never accept nicely for themself. Especially since there will always be some people to tell them it is not necessary. So I'm afraid it can only turn quite ugly...
Thank you Professor Bardi for your macro view of our deplorable situation. As you say, the rich can (and do) think of "something worse": I think immediately of Trump and DOGE eliminating or crippling the parts of the US government tasked with saving lives and improving health while the military machine and corporate subsidies remain fully funded.