Foreword

This is a very ambitious book. The author, Hubert Engelbrecht takes a holistic view on geology, minerals extraction, and the hugely interlinked webs of civilizational use of the resources. He looks into the processes and consequences of 250 years of industrialization for minerals, ecosystems and life. This concentrated synopsis, which attempts to consider all kinds of interactions between humans and nature, opens the eyes for the enormous sizes and momenta of transformations generated.

The author chooses to introduce his subject by describing how natural cycles of matter and energy were modulated by geological and extra-terrestrial processes as well as by evolving life. He distinguishes two kinds of life, one evolving seemingly in a deterministic manner and generating the oxygenated atmosphere; and the other culminating, in a non-deterministic manner, in intelligent organisms capable of escaping from the constraints of photosynthetic energy: the miracle of the emergence of humankind creating innumerable artificial niches in the technosphere.

After a short history of industrialization, the author brings the reader down to the basics: how core and lifeblood of industry work and how its output grew with time: mining, processing and further refinement of immense amounts of mineral commodities, used to meet the demands of 7.5 billion humans.

But nothing came without side-effects. Extraction and processing of minerals and the industrial use of biological resources caused multiple and serious environmental impacts - e.g. atmospheric warming, acidification of oceans, eutrophication of lakes, pollution, deforestation, and an accelerated loss of biodiversity. In a subchapter on atmospheric turnovers, natural and artificial processes are compared.

For a strategic approach to reduce unwanted damage, the author observes the gap between the amount of resources extracted and processed and the amounts safely discarded or recycled. It is the large number of open loops that impair our ecosystems and indeed our health.

The author finishes with listing up decisive reasons, which caused the actual ecological crisis and mentions ideologies, economic systems as well as innate and learned behavior of humans. This book is recommended for reading for students and professionals of engineering, chiefly mining and civil engineering, of business economics, and indeed of political sciences and humanities.