Appendix 1
Appendix 1.1 Data Description
We include the following 65 non-renewable resources in the data-set: fossil minerals: coal,
natural gas, petroleum; metals: aluminum, antimony, arsenic, beryllium, bismuth, boron,
cadmium, cesium, chromium, cobalt, copper, gallium, germanium, gold, indium, lead, lithium,
magnesium (compounds and metal), manganese, mercury, molybdenum, nickel, niobium,
platinum-group metals, pig iron, rare earths, rhenium, salt, selenium, silver, strontium, tan-
talum, thorium, tin, tungsten, vanadium, zinc, zirconium; non-metals: asbestos, barite,
bromine, cement, diatomite, feldspar, fluorspar, garnet, graphite, gypsum, iodine, kyanite,
nitrogen, phosphate rock, potash, pumice, silicon, sulfur, talc& pyrophyllite, tellurium, thal-
lium, uranium, vermiculite, wolalstonite.
We currently do not include the following metals: hafnium, cesium; non-metals: natural
abrasives, clays, coal combustion products (ashes), diamond (industrial), gemstones, iron
oxide pigments, lime, peat, perlite, quartz, sand, soda ash, sodium sulfate, stone, titanium
(pigments, metal, mineral concentrates), and helium. These non-renewable resources are
excluded for a variety of different reasons, including lack of global historical data, e.g. for
stones, no clear separation in the data between natural and synthetic materials like in the
case of industrial diamonds, and prevention of double-counting due to different products in
the value chain. For example, iron ore is not but pig iron is included. Most of the excluded
commodities would not change the results of our analysis, because the extracted quantities
and market value are negligible. The only exception is stones, which exhibit relatively large
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