…Now for the scary part: the world is running out of the raw materials used to make televisions, laptops, mobile phones and many of the other digital gadgets of the 21st century.

An article in New Scientist magazine last year quoted Mr Reller as having said the Earth has 10 years left of indium, which


Mr Reller now shies away from giving expiration dates for precious metals. It leads to speculation, he said, and the higher price can lead to conflict, as in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where a war was fought 10 years ago partly over Rwandan-controlled mines of columbite-tantalite (coltan), one of 25 different metals needed to make one mobile phone.

Resource use has become a global geopolitical issue. By way of example, Mr Reller said China holds a lot of mineral sources, but it is short in copper.