Greens Wage Long Fight Against Copper Mine in Arizona Mountains

[hunter]

1. There are excellent alternatives to copper for plumbing...

... not so much for household wiring. Aluminum wiring works for large scale projects maintained by professionals, but it proved dangerous in homes, causing many fires. It's possible that modern material sciences, electronics (such as arc-fault circuit interuptors), and low energy LED lighting and other electrical appliances, could make aluminum household wiring viable, but there's a tremendously bad reputation to overcome, along with an expectation that ordinary wall outlets will deliver at least 1.5 kilowatts.

Copper is used in cars too. There's about 150 pounds of copper in pure electric cars like the Tesla, three or four times more copper than a modern fuel powered car uses. Older fuel powered cars used a lot of copper too. They had copper radiators and heater cores, etc..

Modern renewable energy systems tend to use a lot of copper too, requiring more copper per kilowatt hour than conventional power plants.

The sad thing about this U.S. copper mine is that it might be much less destructive to the natural environment than copper mines in places with very few or no environmental regulations.

I often think about what it would take to provide every human on earth with safe comfortable housing. Providing everyone with a big suburban house with copper plumbing and wiring, an electric car in the driveway, and wind turbines on the hill would do unimaginable damage to the earth.