Text

Consideration of Abiotic Natural Resources in Life Cycle Assessments

---

On a global scale, there is a lot of talk about fake news at the moment. The perfidious thing is that even scientific theories with a high level of empirical evidence and methodically demanding proof of evidence are suddenly presented to the public as arbitrary. Climate change caused by greenhouse gases emitted by humans is one such example. However, scientific theories cannot be voted on democratically; nor can they be normatively defined or prohibited by a party programme or ideological opinions. They are and must remain part of an inner-scientific discourse. Accordingly, science must keep its standards for evaluating theories and facts high, ensuring their quality and being transparent and comprehensible to the public. Scientific discourse is of great importance here, especially when theories are not yet clearly backed up by facts but are based on
assumptions and plausibility. If the facts are not sufficient to provide clear evidence, there is great danger that one will be too strongly guided by ideological views or particular social interests. In my opinion, one such area is that of resource depletion. Since the completion of the work of Dennis Meadows and his colleagues for the Club of Rome, the exhaustion of metal raw materials in the near future has become a very plausible assumption, with some factual support. However, there are also facts that contradict this. We cannot give a clear answer today. One could even cynically say that evidence can finally only be provided when the case has arisen—in other words, when natural resources have been exhausted. From this point of view, a cautious approach, i.e., the economical
use of resources, would be the most sensible. However, that does not relieve science of the burden of dealing with the facts in a proper way. Actually, this is even more difficult because the resource sector is subject to strong economic interests, but at the same time it is also the focus of political and ideological positions. This topic also has practical relevance. Many technologies that are promoted for reasons of climate protection have a poor resource balance. Within the Life Cycle Assessment, there can therefore be a trade-off between different environmental goals. In climate protection, mankind must react in
short-term, i.e., within a few decades, and with drastic measures, i.e., a complete substitution of fossil fuels. However, how much time do we have on the question of resources? A scientific answer to this question requires discourse. Different opinions must be heard and discussed, in our case even from different disciplines. One’s own assumptions must be questioned again and again. Are they still correct in view of the current facts? This Special Issue of the journal Resources served this purpose and is fully documented in this book publication. An open and honest discussion also took place in London in 2015 at the Natural History Museum (see editorial). It has not yet come to an end and must be continued. I would like to thank everyone who has contributed to it so far and who is open to further discussion.

---

Availability

No copy data

Detail Information

Series Title

-

Call Number

628

Publisher

: MDPI - Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute., 2019

Collation

-

Language

English

ISBN/ISSN

-

Classification

628

Content Type

-

Media Type

-

Carrier Type

-

Edition

-

Subject(s)

Environmental Sciences

Specific Detail Info

-

Statement of Responsibility

Mario Schmidt

Other Information

Cataloger

Firli

Source

-

Other version/related

File Attachment

Comments

---

You must be logged in to post a comment