The extractors of raw material like making that argument, but it is no more legitimate than the enviros claiming that "everything is connected." You can connect anything you want to mineral extraction, but you won't live long enough to make anything without topsoil and rain, and you won't get those without management of the life systems on the land. The point is, one can connect anything one wants to something else, but that doesn't make said connection legitimate to the contention at issue. No one element of the production loop is any less critical, particularly information management.
A math model is a tool. A software program is a tool. Both can preclude use of vast amounts of wasted physical raw material and are therefore equivalent in value to production thereof, yet require virtually no raw material at all. Human intelligence is as important to a productive planet as are its raw materials, both gifts of G_d with which to fulfill the glory of His creation.
It doesn't ALL start with rocks.
I just marvel at the people who don't realize that water, hydrocarbons, minerals and metals and other raw materials along with plant life all come up out of the crust of the earth, but as you say are inert without the magic of G*d's greatest creation... the creatures created in his image.
It just cracks me up the way EnvironMentalists try to turn the concept of "resource extractors" into a despicable pejoritive term. They try to convince everyone that neither man, nor petroleum are naturally a part of G*d's blue/green earth.