Copper Shortage?

A reader asked for my thoughts on this article that predicts a coming shortage of copper, an element that is vital to the sucess of “electrifying everything.”

I hate to sound so cavalier, but random reports on apparent shortages don’t scare me.

For the chapter on peak oil in my first book, “Renewable Energy – Facts and Fantasies,” I asked an expert in the subject about a potential lithium shortage, to which he replied, “We thought there would be an oil shortage 100 years ago, but that was before we started looking for it.”

And copper? The price is falling through the floor. I seriously don’t see it.

Don’t get me wrong; there are challenges associated with all this stuff: children mining cobalt, and so forth, but we often fail to realize that replacement of fossil fuels is vital to the survival of our civilization.