Copperis a chemical element, with symbol Cu and atomic number 29.

This metal is the twelfth non-renewable resource set to disappear thanks to intensive exploitation by mankind.

Remaining workable deposits are estimated at 490 million tonnes.

June 2008: at current rates of production, 15.6 million tonnes per year, deposits will last 31 years.

Extractable deposits of copper will therefore disappear for good in 2028.

Another source estimates that this metal will only be exhausted in 2100.

Link: http://environment.newscientist.com

Copper is essential for electrical installations (55%), the building industry (20%), industrial equipment (10%), and transport (5%). Miscellaneous applications: 10%.

Problems arising from its disappearance will start to make themselves felt well before any of these fateful dates.

Even if, thanks to advances in technology, we find new deposits by digging deeper and deeper into the Earth's crust, this will afford us only a few years' reprieve and will not make a major impact on the situation.

Copper was created when a star exploded and the Sun and the Earth were formed from the debris, over five billion years ago.

You cannot produce it artificially and there is no substitute. The Moon and the asteroids do not contain the metal in an extractable form. And just imagine the energy it would take to bring some back from Mars or Venus!

Note that copper (1-1.4%) could be extracted from polymetallic nodules present on the ocean floor, at depths of several kilometres. The total quantity of polymetallic nodules on the ocean bed was estimated at over 500 billion tonnes by A.A. Archer in 1981. However, given the depths at which they occur, these deposits are not profitably recoverable.

There will still be recycling but demand, which will keep growing exponentially with the development of the emerging economies, will far outstrip supply.

A third of known reserves are to be found in Chile, 7% in Indonesia and 7% in the United States.

To learn more about copper, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copper

Translation Nicholas ROSE