Tipping Point

As occupants of Earth we are just about at a peak point for most of our natural resources.

This is a reference to a presumption that we have taken out more of the minerals and fuels over time than are left in the ground. The big oil and big coal dependency of the industrial world has depleted resources to a critical level and with no real dedication to developing enough sustainable and renewable forms to make any transition seamless or painless.

The western world is toying with wind, wave and solar energy generation but avoiding any decisions on nuclear power which remains contentious and costly although as part of a mixed base of power production there are distinct benefits. The emerging economies cannot be denied their own 21st Century industrial revolutions and will fully exploit this through increasing use of oil and coal to meet consumer demand from their citizens.

Fossil fuels are still there to be discovered but at an increasing level of expenditure in monetary and environmental terms. Territorial claims or intrusions are already taking place in Antarctica and other remote yet beautiful areas of the world where inhospitable terrain and climate have formed a very effective first line of defence against the exploitative tendencies of mankind.

I am therefore pleased to report that we can, as a species, relax in the knowledge that at least one natural resource remains wholly abundant after a comparatively recent discovery in Siberia.

It appears that the Russians have access to ten times the previously estimated global reserves of diamonds.

It has been a known fact for some decades to a privileged few in the higher echelons of power that the harsh tundra and permafrost of Siberia is fair twinkling with the things. It has been a best kept secret because of the previous principal role of Siberia as a large depository for political prisoners and others sentenced to exile. The same criteria that made it suitable as a large penitentiary such as a virtual absence of roads and other transport links prevented exploitation of the diamond fields. This was in spite of the widespread clamour for and use of the precious stones in Russian industry as bits for drills, mining equipment, angle grinders, saws and even medical scalpels. The engineering sector in Russia concentrated on the manufacture of synthetic diamonds to meet their immediate requirements faced by the prohibitive cost of mining and extracting the natural versions from the ground. The vast majority of diamonds in such heavy duty use are not of gem quality, before there is a mass exodus of prospectors from all parts of the Russian Federation, but of a crude , immense density and durability.

In a pioneering quest of trying to extract this resource the Mir Diamond Mine at Yakutia in Siberia was first excavated in 1955. The hole in the ground could only be worked for 5 months of the year because of the influence of the permafrost. By the time of the closure of the operation in 2011 it had reached a depth of 525 metres in a series of reducing concentric circles with broad ledges for access by man and machines. In terms of scale and depth it represented one of the largest man made holes in the surface of the planet. The price paid in the suffering of the labour force in such a harsh environment will have been incalculable and in no way compensated for by the revelation that 20% of the diamonds were of gem quality. The abandonment of Mir was made easier by the relaxation of the former suppressed information that ,farther north into the tundra and wastes ,the diamonds just lay about on the surface.

The location is the Popigai Meteor Crater. It is the seventh largest impact crater so far found on the earth's crust and at 35 million years old, give or take a few millennia, happened at roughly the same time as those in North America. The crater is 60 miles across and the fiery impact of the meteor into the graphite based geology formed a fine material which on closer inspection in the 1970's was found to be of super compressed diamonds, and lots of them. To date, only an area representing 0.3% of the landed area in the crater has been exploited but there are predictions that if the same volume is present through the other 99.7% then 147 billion carats or hundreds of thousands of tons are there for the taking.

The region remains very inaccessible being 2000 miles away from the course of the Trans-Siberian Railway and sparsely populated apart from inherited clusters of inhabitants left over from Stalin's Gulags. The Russians expect the extraction of the impact diamonds to revolutionise their economy in a plentiful supply of shiny tipped tools to facilitate the manufacture of cheap technology and make it readily available so reducing dependence on imports and the output whims and fancies of other industrial nations.

I find no comfort however in the thought of possessing beautifully tooled and engineered products when huddled in the dark and cold of an energy starved, power cut existence some time soon.