Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 41, Number 88, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 July 1909 — Minerals Are Disappearing From the Earth. [ARTICLE]

Minerals Are Disappearing From the Earth.

A .bulletin just issued by the geological survey gives some startling information on the exhaustion of natural resources. The most serious situation is that with regard to petroleum. Petroleum has been used for less than fifty years, and it is estimated that the supply will last only about twenty-five or thirty years longer. If production is curtailed and waste stopped it may last till the end of the century. Animal and vegetable oils will not begin to supply its place. One billion cubic feet of natural gas is estimated to be wasted into the air every twenty-four hours. The gas supply will last about twenty-five years. Coal has been extensively mined in the United States for not much more than half a century, but the consumption is increasing so enormously that if this increase should continue all the easily accessible coal would be exhausted by the year 2040 and all coal by the middle of the twenty-first century. Water power will, undoubtedly take its place.