The Triumph of the Tangible

In an era seemingly dominated by immaterial flows of information, microchips, and digital finance, discussions often overlook the massive, physical foundation of modern civilization,. While high-purity silicon is the signature material of the electronic age, its annual output is minuscule, roughly 10,000 tons of wafers, compared to the bulk materials that underpin our physical world.

The continuation of high civilization depends not on app-based innovations, but on the reliable, mass-scale provision of physical materials. The four most critical materials supporting modern society—ammonia, plastics, steel, and cement—are so indispensable that they form the four pillars of modern civilization. These materials are necessary in colossal and still-increasing quantities globally.

The Unyielding Constraints of Scale

Colossal Production Volumes

The sheer scale of demand for these essential materials exposes the fragility of the “dematerialization” narrative. In 2019, the world consumed approximately 4.5 billion tons of cement, 1.8 billion tons of steel, 370 million tons of plastics, and 150 million tons of ammonia. This massive consumption determines our ability to build critical infrastructure, extract energy, and produce food.

The production of these four material pillars claims about 17 percent of the world’s primary energy supply and accounts for 25 percent of all CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion,. Moreover, key production processes require fossil fuels not just for energy, but as irreplaceable chemical feedstocks—natural gas for ammonia and hydrocarbons for plastics. Currently, there are no commercially available mass-scale alternatives ready to displace these established, affordable processes,.

Recycling and Resource Scarcity

The availability of raw materials is highly unequal, though reserves of the primary metal, iron, are abundant, with a resource/production ratio exceeding 300 years,. Recycling offers a partial solution: secondary steel made in an electric arc furnace (EAF) requires about 5 GJ/ton of energy, compared to 25 GJ/ton for primary integrated steelmaking,. However, recycled steel accounts for only about 30 percent of total annual global output, meaning that primary production, which is heavily carbon-intensive, still dominates,.

Decarbonization efforts also create new material dependencies, which are often overlooked. A single typical lithium car battery, weighing about 450 kilograms, requires the processing of approximately 40 tons of ores, which is an incredibly energy-intensive process. Furthermore, mass-scale renewable technologies are material heavy: a wind turbine requires nearly 200 tons of steel per megawatt of capacity, along with significant quantities of plastic resins and concrete for its foundation,.

Infrastructure and Material Decay

The world has embedded nearly 700 billion tons of hard but slowly crumbling material in concrete structures between 1990 and 2020. Ordinary construction concrete is not highly durable, often deteriorating badly within a few decades. This looming reality implies an “unprecedented burden of concrete deterioration, renewal, and removal” in the coming decades, particularly in rapidly urbanized countries like China.

The complexity of replacing key material processes is profound. The production of ammonia, vital for global food security, currently depends heavily on natural gas, and transitioning to alternatives like water electrolysis remains nearly five times more expensive. This situation is exacerbated in modernizing economies, which require vast material expansion: replicating just a quarter of China’s recent material advances would necessitate a more than tenfold increase in their current cement use.

Beyond Dematerialization

Claims about the dematerialization of modern economies are misleading, driven by a focus on miniaturized electronic devices. While material inputs per unit of some finished products have decreased, absolute material demands have continued to rise, particularly in low-income countries where billions still aspire to own basic modern amenities.

The economic rise of these developing nations means that demands for steel, cement, ammonia, and plastics remain far below any saturation level,. Therefore, modern civilization will remain fundamentally dependent on the massive flows of these materials, and on the fossil fuels used to produce them, until all energy for extraction and processing comes from renewable conversions. No digital innovation, artificial intelligence, or electronic message will change this foundational reality.