UNITED STATES MINERAL RESOURCES 



MINERAL RESOURCE ESTIMATES AND PUBLIC POLICY 



By V. E. McKelvey 



CONTENTS 



Page 



Introduction 9 



Ck)ncepts of reserves and resources 11 



Examples of estimates of potential resources 13 



Quantifying the undiscovered 14 



Need for review of resource adequacy 17 



Selected bibliography 18 



FIGURES 



Graph showing per capita energy consumption 

 compared to per capita Gross National Product 



Graph showing per capita steel consumption com- 

 pared to per capita Gross National Product 



Diagram showing classification of mineral re- 

 serves and resources 



Graph showing domestic reserves of elements 

 compared to their abundance in the earth's 

 crust 



TABLE 



Some estimates of U.S. crude-oil reserves and re- 

 sources 



INTRODUCTION 



10 



12 



16 



Pa(?e 



14 



Not many people, I have found, realize the extent 

 of our dependence on minerals. It was both a sur- 

 prise and a pleasure, therefore, to come across the 

 observations of George Orwell in his book "The Road 

 to Wigan Pier." When describing the working con- 

 ditions of English miners in the 1930's, he evi- 

 dently was led to reflect on the significance of coal : 



Our civilization ... is founded on coal, more completely 

 than one realizes until one stops to think about it. The 

 machines that keep us alive, and the machines that make 



the machines are all directly or indirectly dependent upon 

 coal .... Practically everything we do, from eating an ice 

 to crossing the Atlantic, and from baking a loaf to writing 

 a novel, involves the use of coal, directly or indirectly. For 

 all the arts of peace coal is needed; if war breaks out it is 

 needed all the more. In time of revolution the miner must go 

 on working or the revolution must stop, for revolution as 

 much as reaction needs coal ... In order that Hitler may 

 march the goosestep, that the Pope may denounce Bolshevism, 

 that the cricket crowds may assemble at Lords, that the 

 Nancy poets may scratch one another's backs, coal has got 

 to be forthcoming. 



To make Orwell's statement entirely accurate — 

 and ruin its force with complications — we should 

 speak of mineral fuels, instead of coal, and of other 

 minerals also, for it is true that minerals and min- 

 eral fuels are the resources that make the industrial 

 society possible. The essential role of minerals and 

 mineral fuels in human life may be illustrated by a 

 simple equation 



L= 



P 



in which the society's average level of living (L), 

 measured in its useful consumption of goods and 

 services, is seen to be a function of its useful con- 

 sumption of all kinds of raw materials {R), includ- 

 ing metals, nonmetals, water, soil minerals, biologic 

 produce, and so on; times its useful consumption of 

 all forms of energy {E) ; times its useful consump- 

 tion of all forms of ingenuity (/), including political 

 and socio-economic as well as technologic ingenuity ; 

 divided "by the number of people (P) who share in 

 the total product. 



This is a restatement of the classical economists' 

 equation in which national output is considered to 

 be a function of its use of capital and labor, but it 

 shows what capital and labor really are. Far from 

 being mere money, which is what it is popularly 

 thought to mean, capital represents accumulated 

 usable raw materials and things made from them, 

 usable energy, and especially accumulated knowl- 



U.S. GEOL. SURVEY PROF. PAPER 820 



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