The US is allergic to it, but needs to get over it.

Aluminum wire was tried in the 1970s due to a spike in copper prices. The problem was that they just tried to swap it right in. Aluminum and copper have different rates of expansion. Over time, that would slowly loosen the connectors, and the wires would pop right out and cause a fire.

You can design connectors to handle both, and you'll see many electrical things today specify that they're good for aluminum or copper wire. It still has a bad reputation among electricians; they haven't unlearned the problem yet.

Now, one place it's more of a problem is in things like transformer windings. There are kilometers of wiring in any of them, so the higher resistance of aluminum is a problem.

There could be two ways to address this problem. One is asteroid mining, which has the potential to be extremely lucrative because there are lots of asteroids with huge metal deposits.

Another is discovering new conductors. There's been progress in developing conductive plastics.
https://phys.org/news/2022-10-scientists-material-plastic-metal.html

Good think we can use aluminum and copper then...

Things like platinum notwithstanding, It will almost always be more expensive to go get things in space than on earth.

Hell, even on earth it is often too expensive to get metals like iron if there isn't rail or a port nearby. Imagine having to fly iron ingots around and the associated aviation fuel cost. Whatever crazy fuel bill you're imagining, multiply by a hundred or more if you're imagining getting it from space.

No, all of those metals in space are best used to build some future version of our civilization _in situ. _

this was before we figured out that you can use stranded aluminum wire and it's fine this way

that, or copper clad aluminum

Meth-heads?

Fuck, even more plastics?

But that would be unfair to the average Joe! And think about the billionaires; how would they survive if everything was shared? /s

How much old copper piping is still out there that could be replaced by other materials to recover the copper? I'm sure there are other common obsolete applications. The nice thing about metals is that we already have a pretty robust recycling chain in place for them. That plus the remaining supply plus aluminium plus other replacements plus careful design to minimize the use of copper where it's absolutely necessary might be enough to carry us through.

Its not just electricians, its got a stigma that seems really hard to overcome without some sort of education campaign. People wont buy a place that has aluminum wires.

Now, one place it’s more of a problem is in things like transformer windings. There are kilometers of wiring in any of them, so the higher resistance of aluminum is a problem.

Is it? As far as I know you can use a larger diameter wire to get the same resistance as copper, if your device has enough space for bigger coils.

"General, we need to consult all of the local meth addicts, stat."

The poor will have scavenged the abandoned buildings in built-up areas, yes. Still-occupied buildings and those in smaller towns with no easy access to a scrapyard are more likely to be intact. So it's more likely to be a case of "these are no longer to code, they are not grandfathered, you have a two-year grace period to switch them out" (staggered geographically or by building classification to avoid a run on plastic pipes) plus "road trip!"

We might also end up mining older dumps for stuff discarded when copper was cheaper.

Just banking on some bot figuring out how to do this within the next 15 years.

There used to be a bot like this on that site that was run by that troubled young man who decided to focus exclusively on monetization to selfishly help fund lawsuits related to multiple instances of trespassing on farms and being found pants down fucking chickens.

Abolish copper coins. Job done

But inflating the base battery capacity to cover people having showers at 5pm because it's easier than storage water heaters and time/remote controls is stupid. You can reduce the base need for batteries by reducing the need for electricity in the first place and reducing the use of vehicles that need to carry batteries in place of e.g. overhead catenary.

A solution that doesn't take into account human nature isn't a solution.

Largely done already, as I understand it. Most use zinc now.

Plastics aren’t inherently bad. Just like anything else, it’s the misuse that makes them bad.

This smells a little funny, as others have suggested. I read an article a while ago that suggested that we're not running out of raw materials; we're thinking about the problem wrong:

Chachra proposes that we could – we must – treat material as scarce, and that one way to do this is to recognize that energy is not. We can trade energy for material, opting for more energy intensive manufacturing processes that make materials easier to recover when the good reaches its end of life. We can also opt for energy intensive material recovery processes. If we put our focus on designing objects that decompose gracefully back into the material stream, we can build the energy infrastructure to make energy truly abundant and truly clean.

This is all outlined in the book How Infrastructure Works from Deb Chachra.

There's also the idea of crashing a metallic asteroid somewhere convenient, like the Outback.