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.

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.

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

This was my first thought, we aren't going to develop the whole world. That's not how this works. Who said that was a goal of... well ... anyone's?

That's a rhetorical question. Frfr tho, does that remind me work on your instance only, or what's the deal with that?

What I mean is that the bulk of current copper wiring goes towards distribution and consumption, not generation.

Yes, but big batteries everywhere is going to effect that if there's copper in lithium batteries, and apparently there is.

This isn't a big thing. This is a constant thing in every system. It's the push and pull between efficiency and resiliency. More storage capacity is less efficient when things are going well, but is more resilient and adaptable when they're not.

Excess storage capacity, sure.

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.

Abolish copper coins. Job done

Fuck, even more plastics?

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.

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

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

Yeah, just a little pollution is okay as long as you don't misuse it.

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.

What is this publication and who finances it because this section is incredibly sus:

Copper use is not carved in stone. Hybrid cars, which pair small batteries with gasoline engines, need far less of the metal than fully electric vehicles.

Power grids that mix nuclear, wind, solar, and a pinch of natural-gas backup can slice the copper bill dramatically compared with battery-heavy systems.

“First of all, users can fact-check the study, but also they can change the study parameters and evaluate how much copper is required if we have an electric grid that is 20% nuclear, 40% methane, 20% wind, and 20% hydroelectric, for example,” Simon said. “They can make those changes and see what the copper demand will be.”

Like you think we can transition to an increasingly electrified world, where all power comes from electric utility lines, and you think our copper usage will be ... just in renewable power plants?

This reads like straight fossil fuel propaganda. In an electrified future the majority of copper use comes from distribution lines and products that use electricity not the type of power plants generating electricity.

Well the earth is already developed enough so i guess the copper was enough???

Yeah, that ain't happening for the next 50 years. The amount of logistics and technology required for that is beyond immense, never mind risks

Yeah, that ain't happening for the next 50 years. The amount of logistics and technology required for that is beyond immense, never mind risks