Conclusions

Abstract

It is time now to pull the threads together. We set out with a very broad and general view and narrowed the focus successively to problems that are more down to earth and manageable, but no less interesting for that matter. We began with some perhaps unorthodox remarks about the sustainability of human civilization in a changing world. We went on to consider an apparently unsustainable activity, the extraction of minerals for the production of energy and materials, observing that the only way of making such activity sustainable is to accumulate knowledge to ultimately do without such sources. But at the global level, that need is a long way off. We zoomed in on the individual country, state or province with a limited supply of non-renewable minerals of good quality. If that country, state or province wants to preserve its riches it will have to invest an appropriate portion of its mineral rents in renewable wealth of some kind. We looked at four cases where investment funds have been used for this purpose. Nauru’s phosphate funds have largely failed, but the available information on these funds and their practices is limited. This leaves us with the petroleum funds of Alaska, Alberta and Norway.