Growth or Scale? By Tom Murphy, originally published by Do the Math May 22, 2024
"...It’s not too hard to lay hands on records of global resource use. One publication I ran across has some useful graphs for a few raw materials in common use. The first graph shows annual extraction of copper, zinc, and lead since 1900, usefully...
...From 1960 to 2005, in no region of the world did annual production of timber moderate alongside growth. The total global activity almost doubled (77% increase) over this interval rather than stagnating or tumbling by a factor of two as growth did.
The result for all of these resources is clear: scale is a more apt correlate than growth. The curves bear a family resemblance to the hockey-stick scale curves: far less resemblance to the peaking growth curves. A confounder in this is that per-capita resource extraction has also risen for many materials, in association with economic growth..."