A Perfect Storm for Materials Industries

Several long-term challenges are now converging to form a 'perfect storm' that threatens to engulf the materials industries. The list of the primary issues in-dudes: world financial crisis, raw material supply, energy supply and costs, environmental constraints, global competition, and new technologies. However, the ultimate driving force behind this perfect storm is simply population growth. World population has grown exponentially over the past 200 years. The result is more people requiring food, water, land, shelter, materials, and energy. The pressures have been overwhelming on supplies of raw materials and energy, and especially on the environment. And because technology has driven per capita consumption of all resources dramatically higher, the challenges are that much more intense. This article briefly overviews each of these issues.