The conflict between efficacy and sustainability: Utilize the «mineral capital» of the Earth or the solar flow and its renewable by-products

Abstract

The problem of petroleum is undertaken here in a more extensive and clarifying scope that allows us to visualize the true crossroads which the industrial civilization is confronting.  A methodology is proposed in this article for calculation of the physical price in terms of energy of the price of reinstatement of the mineral capital of the planet, and as criterion to determine the sustainability of the exploitation of a mineral resource up to the closing of the cycle of materials, considering thus the prices of extraction and reinstatement.