180 The Political Economy of Resource Use 



the availability and cost of energy. Given adequate supplies of low- 

 cost energy, minerals from low-grade deposits and from the sea can 

 be conceived as available in nearly unlimited quantities. Thus it is 

 important to draw a distinction between conservation as it affects land, 

 water and, perhaps, energy sources, on the one hand, and conserva- 

 tion as it relates to particular raw material outputs on the other. 



Turning to particular materials, it may be useful, for illustrative 

 purposes, to consider the case of lead which appears to be, among 

 minerals, the best candidate for conservation action. On the face of it, 

 the prospects for the future supplies of lead in the United States and 

 in the world look black. The high point for domestic production of 

 primary lead was in 1925 when output totaled 684,000 tons. By 1950 

 domestic output was down to 430,000 tons. In the meantime the 

 steady increase in United States consumption had reached a figure of 

 1,423,000 tons by 1950. Despite the rapid expansion of secondary 

 production, the United States has had to import, in recent years, 

 around 40 per cent of total consumption. 



The known reserves of lead in this country are very low; not more 

 than three times annual production and not much more than one 

 year's consumption of the primary metal. If inferred reserves are in- 

 cluded they amount to perhaps twelve times annual production and 

 six or seven times annual consumption. No discovery of any magni- 

 tude has been made in the United States in a generation. 



The reserve position in the world as a whole is somewhat better 

 but not by any means easy. In 1950 the President's Materials Policy 

 Commission estimated the world's known and inferred reserves at 27 

 million tons with world consumption of primary metal running at 

 about 1.6 million tons.^* Apart from a relatively small find in Green- 

 land, there has not been an important discovery anywhere in the world 

 since the end of the war. The PMPC estimated world requirements 

 for primary lead in 1975 at 2.7 million tons and judged that the pros- 

 pects for meeting these requirements are "not good." ^^ 



When we turn to consumption we find that storage batteries and 



^'^ Resources for Freedom (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 

 1952), Vol. II, Ch. 6. The following discussion of lead is largely drawn from 

 this source. 



25 Ibid., p. 43. 



