Technology

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.

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

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

Well couldn't we, like, share it? The average joe in america is consuming 100 times more than an indian

Sounds like doomish stuff. We innovate all the time. If copper and lithium are short supply items then technology will morph to use something else.

Have they tried pulling it out of the walls of abandoned buildings? There's a lot left in there that no one uses anymore. /s

This all suggests that we keep producing, wasting and manufacturing things infinitely without ever recycling, reusing or re purposing everything that we are mining out of the ground. The article notes that this includes recycling but only at the rate we have now.

If we keep running our world the way we are now for the next hundred yes .... than yes, we are going to run out of everything because we live in an absolutely wasteful society that only runs in a way to produce things designed with planned obsolescence to break down in a short amount of time so that we can produce more junk to sell and drive a stupid economy to make a small group of idiots even more wealthy. The whole system is designed to run on making infinite money by producing infinite junk that doesn't last long.

Yes at the rate we are going and the way we are producing things and the way we shape our economy and the way we base our manufacturing .... we are definitely going to run out of everything.

We can change our economy and the way we produce and manufacture things - and get rid of this stupid structure of society of just endlessly making money for a small group of morons .... or we can keep doing things the way we are now until we run off a cliff and destroy everything and drive our species into extinction.