In 2019, the latest year of data at the time of writing, we mined, dug and blasted more materials from the earth’s surface than the sum total of everything we extracted from the dawn of humanity all the way through to 1950. Consider that for a moment. In a single year we extracted more resources than humankind did in the vast majority of its history—from the earliest days of mining to the industrial revolution, world wars and all. Nor was 2019 a one-off. In fact, you could have said precisely the same thing about every year since 2012. And far from diminishing, our appetite for raw materials
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