Parable: dust covers and stranded mining energy

A parable for you FUD busters to use:

A library was running short on shelf space. They had the idea to remove the dust covers on all the books. Removing two pages from every book would save miles and miles of shelf space.

There was no effect on usable shelf space.

The reason? While it was a large amount of paper removed from the shelves, it was "Stranded paper." No more than a few dozen pages per shelf. Never enough to add a single book to a given shelf.

It was better to use this "stranded shelf space" for dust covers than not use it at all.