Are we going realistically find enough undiscovered lithium reserves that is the same size as our known reserves as of 2022, even assuming that he is off by a factor of 4?
And we are probably going to burn fossil fuel to obtain the energy for this?
You can look at recently-proposed remote green hydrogen facilities as inspiration. Similar to hydrogen, since you don't need to worry about connecting to the grid, you can build solar and wind generators pretty much anywhere that has a ton of sun and wind, extract the lithium onsite, and then ship it to where it's needed.
https://www.theengineer.co.uk/content/news/kaust-spinout-wil...
We have not run out of any mineral ever and I don't believe we ever will.
Is mineral not a finite resource? I don't understand your source of optimism here.
[1] Helium may be one of the exceptions here, but I would guess even that is produceable with some future nucleaf technology given enough money.
Because historically we do not have technology complex enough to need specific minerals. Now we do.
> Most of these needs we can fulfill with many different minerals. And the amount of all [1] minerals in earths crust is staggering compared to any foreseeable futre, so we are just going to flip to whatever is easiest/cheapest to dig.
There is another factor at play though: energy required to extract the minerals. Ones deeper in the earth's crust are likely more energy intensive to extract and perhaps even purify. At some point it won't be worth it.
Right, the issue is cost of extraction (in materials, energy, and externalities, the only real currencies), not exhaustion of the reserves. I think Simon would argue 1) that the degree to which the current economy depends on fossil resources (e.g. for metal-working; how do we reach the required temperatures without melting an electrically-powered heating element?) has not been grasped by policy-makers or the public, and 2) that we are already in energy decline, exacerbated by ongoing failure of ecosystem services. In other words, he thinks we have bled too much momentum and triggered too many blowbacks to "level off" at current living standards, if that were even a viable path forward (given the rate at which we are destroying the biological basis for human life, it is not).