Massive Abundance
Consists of
- massive persisent abundance: "Because abundance based on persistent mass consists of matter, and matter is never really destroyed, such abundance persists, once it is made available."
- massive-dissipative resources because they are dissipated after use
Description
Roberto Verzola:
"Massive Abundance: A Bulky Gift of Nature
The two additional archetypes are based on the massive bulk of certain elements and compounds in nature. Air is available to all. Water too, with exceptions. The abundance of sand promises a practically inexhaustible source of silicon, which provides the elemental basis for the hardware infrastructure of the information economy as well as future solar energy economies. The hydrogen in the sun provides the Earth with abundant renewable solar energy that creates its own cascades of abundance. It is solar energy that drives all living systems, the water cycle, the global circulation of air. Properly tapped, it will provide humanity with inexhaustible sources of solar, wind, water and ocean energy that can make dirtier non-renewable sources like fossil and radioactive fuels unnecessary. The third and fourth archetypes are both archetypes of massive abundance of natural elements and compounds found on Earth and elsewhere, another gift of nature, by their sheer bulk, to Homo sapiens.
We use the substances belonging to the massive-persistent abundance archetype for their material content – air, water, sand, minerals, etc., as raw material for the finished products we make. We use the other substances belonging to the massive-dissipative archetype for their energy content – coal, oil, natural gas, and so on.
Because abundance based on persistent mass consists of matter, and matter is never really destroyed, such abundance persists, once it is made available. All the metals dug out of the earth since Homo sapiens started using iron, copper, bronze, tin, aluminum, etc. are still above ground, some-where – in dumps, basements and cellars, and various nooks and corner of human dwellings, whether in use and abandoned. The persistent type undergo very little chemical transformation during their use. Most of the different metals dug up as ore, processed, and subsequently incorporated into a finished product, possibly ending up as waste, still exist as metal today, slowly oxidizing somewhere. Their persistence allows them to be reused or recycled over and over again, with little additional chemical processing.
The key towards appropriate management of this archetype is a better system of recovering and recycling the resource, to enhance the persistence of these abundant goods for their human users.
Some of the other raw materials are so transformed after use that these are essentially one-time use materials. (Other uses, of course, may be found for the transformed by-products, like using waste heat from cooling condensers for space heating.) These include all those we use for their energy content. We can call them massive-dissipative resources because they are dissipated after use. They are the depletable, exhaustible resources. While we may start with an abundance by virtue of their bulk, the use of the resource transforms and depletes it. Once used, that's it. Given the known reserves and cur-rent rates of consumption, for instance, the world's oil reserves are at best good only for a few more human generations. Then they will be gone. Other non-renewable energy resources also fall under this archetype.\
The principal management approach for this archetype should be conservation, to leave as much of the resource to future generations, who may dis-cover much better and more efficient ways of put-ting these non-renewable resources to good use." (http://www.i-r-i-e.net/inhalt/011/011-full.pdf)
More Information
and also: Psychic Abundance ; Derivative Abundance ; Pseudo Abundance