“There’s not enough metal in the earth’s crust
for every Chinese to have a car”
--- David Graeber,
Charlie Rose, 4 August 2012 (HK).
Author of “Debt: The First 5,000 Years”.
Pretty catchy sound bite.
But is it true?
No.
He’s wrong by a factor of between 50 and over 200. (Facts and figures below the fold).
Graeber was talking to Charlie Rose, about
his book and his political philosophy.
That, in short, is a kind of Anarchist Progressivism. Despises capitalism and modern
democracy. Calls for economic
decisions to be made by some undefined “getting together” of people to make
decisions for “the common good”. Against consumerism (of course) and preaching the whole neo-Malthusian "we're running out of resources" gig.
He’s influential – on Charlie Rose after
all – and yet wrong on this simple, clear, and incorrect statement. If he’s so wrong about that (or, perhaps worse, knows it’s wrong and
still duplicitously says it, because it sounds scary), then what else is he wrong about, or deliberately misleading us about?
[Calculations below the fold]
UPDATE (8 Aug): I sent following email to Charlie Rose's program, and got their acknowledgement below:
Steel:
[Calculations below the fold]
UPDATE (8 Aug): I sent following email to Charlie Rose's program, and got their acknowledgement below:
[my email, 4 Aug, to charlierose@pbs.org]:
I always enjoy Charlie Rose on Saturday's Bloomberg here in Hong Kong.
On this morning show (HK time) guest David Graeber made a statement along the lines of:
"There's not enough metal in the earth's crust for every Chinese to have a car".
This statement is false and badly so.
I thinks it's significant as it casts doubts on his other statements.
See here for the stats.
Sincerely, Peter F, Hong Kong.
[Their answer, 7 Aug]:
Dear Peter,
Your message has been forwarded to Charlie. We appreciate your comments and continued loyalty to the program.
Thanks!
Charlie Rose Viewer Services
Steel:
Iron ore production
per year: 2.5 billion tonnes
Iron ore resources:
“exceed” 800 billion tonnes
Iron Ore to Steel conversion
ratio: 1.4 T ore per tonne of steel
Therefore, resources in terms of steel =
800/1.4 = 571 billion tonnes
Annual production
of steel: 1.5 billion
Therefore years of resources at present
production = 571/1.5 = 380 years
(using a different
figure for reserves, 370 billion tonnes, gives 370/1.4/1.5 = 176 years)
Chinese population: 1.2 billion
Therefore one car/Chinese = 1.2 billion new
cars
Amount of steel in the average car: 1800 pounds = 816 kg = 0.816 tonnes.
Extra steel required to build one car for
every Chinese: 1.2 billion x 0.816 tonnes = 980 million tonnes of additional steel.
This is a little under 8 months of current annual
production.
Let’s say we give every Chinese a new car
each year. Then the annual
production of steel would have to go from 1.5 billion tonnes to about 2.5 billion tonnes. That means the current
resources would be good for 230 years instead of the current 380 years (or, on the basis of "reserves", to 105 years instead of 176 years).
Thus: Graeber’s statement, for steel, is wrong by an enormous
factor, at the very least around
105 times and as much as 230 times
(assuming that his statement meant that the earth would run out of iron
ore in a year if every Chinese bought a car).
Have I forgotten anything?
Well, he did say “metal”, not just steel. There’s also aluminium:
Aluminium:
Bauxite reserves: 38 billion tonnes
Bauxite to Aluminium conversion ratio: 4.4
T of ore per tonne of aluminium
Therefore reserves in terms of aluminium: 38/4.4 = 8.6 billion tonnes
Annual production of aluminium:
30 million tonnes = 0.03 billion tonnes
Therefore years of reserves at present
production = 8.6/0.03 = 288 years
The average car has 236
pounds of aluminium = 107 kg = 0.107 tonnes
Extra aluminium required to build one car
for every Chinese: 1.2 billion x 0.107 tonnes = 128 million tonnes of
additional aluminium
This is about four years of
production. If we added this every
year, that means current reserves would last 54 years (8.6/(0.03 + 0.128 = 8.6/0.158) instead of 288.
So in this case, Graeber statement for aluminium is out by a factor
of 54.
In all, then he's out by factors between 54 and 230.
Moreover, these calculations take no
account of the following factors which will increase the years of production available
for both steel and aluminium:
- Recycling: Steel is one of the easiest metals to recycle and is already widely recycled. Aluminium is also widely recycled. Recycling technologies for both are improving and the percentage recycled growing.
- Use of steel in cars: steel itself is improving, using less ore per tonne of steel and the use of ultra-high strength steels is reducing the amount of ore used per tonne of steel and the amount of steel, by weight in cars. Ref
- Reserves: of iron ore don’t include the vast quantities on the sea beds. In fact, both iron ore and bauxite are amongst the most common elements making up the Earth.
Graeber either doesn’t know these facts, in which case his research is shoddy; or he knows them and has
chosen to mispresent them for a nice scary sound bite. In either
case, it doesn’t reflect well on him: he is either a fool or a knave.
Is this important?
Well, yes. Graeber is an influential spokesman – he was on the Charlie
Rose show, after all. He represents the
“progressive” liberal left. Or far
left, more like it, as he’s a self-confessed Anarchist, not a political
philosophy that has contributed to the world’s wealth, as far as I’m
aware. He predicts, indeed
promotes, the downfall of capitalism, to be replaced by “democracy” which in
his telling sounds very much like communism. As Charlie Rose suggested (kind
of), he, Graeber, seems to be saying, as many have before, that communism had
not failed, it just had "not been implemented properly". Yet capitalism, for all its faults, has
been responsible for the greatest increase in the wealth and health of nations in the
history of mankind. If you want to see a dramatic difference between capitalism and the kind of communitarianism that Graeber seems to prefer, look at a night satellite photo of South and North Korea. It's startling: the former brightly lit; the latter in darkness. North Koreans are not only way poorer, but in worse health, the average North Korean being about two inches shorter than his counterpart in the South. The problem with Graeber's vision is that it's been tried and always -- always -- failed with no convincing evidence that it will ever succeed.
The importance of his misreprestation is
that it influences those who would bring about the downfall of capitalism. Little sound bites like his above will
resonate with these people and won’t be checked, because it plays to their biases.
And if he plays so wild and loose with this one quote, how can one trust the
rest of what he says: the iniquity of debt, of the capitalist system, of
democracy as it works today.
All for some kind of Anarchist utopia, in
his dreams. Utopians have brought
about some of the worst depredations on makind. Think Hitler, Stalin, Mao, millenarian utopians all.
