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

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.

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

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.

That would be great except for one problem: capitalism. Proper recovery and recycling of materials will never happen so long as production of new materials is cheaper.

Ea-Nasir, you sold me an insufficient earth!!!

Also capitalism's need for infinite growth has lead us to impose engineered "demand creation" (through advertising) and now even "growth hacking" to supercharge this process.
It has made us more wasteful than ever.
We are headed into a wall.

Catch me in Uganda

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

This is an article about scarcity, insufficient supply to meet demand.

Artificial demand creation isn't necessary, or even productive, when the existing demand already outstrips supply.

And if it is the case that demand is much higher than supply, that's a baked in financial incentive that rewards people for efficient recycling.

Capitalism is bad at pricing in externalities. It's pretty good at using price signals to allocate finite resources to more productive uses.

Ea-Nasir, you sold me an insufficient earth!!!

In a lot of cases you can also use Aluminum instead of copper. You need thicker wires and it's less flexible, but it's doable and cheaper. Some old electric motors from the eastern block used aluminium coils for that matter, because copper was much more expensive there.

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.

This is an article about scarcity, insufficient supply to meet demand.

Artificial demand creation isn't necessary, or even productive, when the existing demand already outstrips supply.

And if it is the case that demand is much higher than supply, that's a baked in financial incentive that rewards people for efficient recycling.

Capitalism is bad at pricing in externalities. It's pretty good at using price signals to allocate finite resources to more productive uses.

If you have the tech to do that, just capture the asteroid in orbit and mine it in space.

Copper doesn't get used up. The blue rocks in the picture are basically copper rust. We just need to use it in smart ways...no copper pots or door handles. Or at Least identify and recycle it more efficiently by returning used electronics to the stores we purchased them from. Those places should have a plan on how to dismantle the used electronics and how to reuse the materials.

Capitalism is bad at pricing in externalities. It's pretty good at using price signals to allocate finite resources to more productive uses.

Markets do not equal capitalism. You can have the efficiencies of free markets (worker owned co-ops which are market socialist) without the all consuming greed of capitalism.