You seem to be trying to push a narrative that I don’t oppose as if I do. I support degrowth but your reasons are flawed.

Pumped Hydro, solar, and wind don’t really use lithium, nickel, or cobalt. Those are mostly used in NCM Liion cells that none of these use. Permanent magnets would probably be the biggest headache tbh.

Idk why we’d need silicone, we’re not making sex toys here. /s silicon is most common in sand and rocks, something there is plenty of basically everywhere.

I don’t care what you’re saying for this circular problem. I’ve literally not addressed it once because I agree with you, I just don’t agree with your reasoning.

They’ll sell us any flavour of distraction other than “work less, do less, slow down and enjoy life more.” Whatever way you cut it, its the only answer.

It’s really telling that this is regarded as such a terrible thing by almost everyone.

What about the energy transition materials like lithium, nickel and cobalt? We don’t have enough of those. All the windmills in the world won’t help, if you can’t convert motion into electricity.

We literally don’t need any of those. Grid scale storage I don’t think has used Nickel and Cobalt for some time, as the best way is to use Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries which need fewer replacements (longer cycle life) and are less volatile (explosive). Sodium batteries remove the need for even Lithium. Sodium is many times more abundant btw. As bad as they are Lead Acid batteries are also an option, as well as many other battery technologies made with less rare earth materials. Heck you could just do pumped hydro and not worry about batteries at all.

You also don’t need any of those materials to make electricity from motion. A generator is a fairly simple device needing only coils of wire and a few moving parts. Some need permanent magnets but even that isn’t hard really. Storing power was always the problem, not making it.

Likewise current reactors are a joke in terms of fuel efficiency. Basing any estimate on current reactor technology being used is kind of silly, as we already know we can do so much better. The majority of earth’s nuclear fuel is in fertile materials, not fissile materials. We have known this for a long time by the way. Decades ago countries like the USA and Japan were doing research into reactors using U-238, more than 100 times as abundant as U-235. It has been demonstrated that breeder reactors for Plutonium from U-238 are feasible even 50 or 60 years ago. The reason we don’t do this is because U-235 reactors were determined to be cheaper, and probably safer. I think sacrificing some safety and cost is necessary when up against something like climate change. With modern technology I am sure safety issues could be reduced or eliminated. Likewise Thorium is a thing, but that’s more experimental than U-238 to Plutonium technology.

If we are talking about solar panels: just don’t. Solar panels are mostly glass and silicon. I believe some rarer materials are needed to make them as efficient as they are now, but that doesn’t mean they are actually needed. In fact why bother with solar panels at all? They aren’t even the most efficient way of turning solar power into useful energy. Solar systems that work using mirrors to heat molten salt have their own energy storage built-in, and don’t require exotic materials, and are more efficient anyway. They might require more investment, or be more complex to deploy, but overall they are a great option.

Degrowth might be necessary in the short term. Long term wise though humanity very much has room to grow further. We haven’t even talked about mining the moon yet, and if we can’t do that we are very much screwed anyway. Being dependant on one planet is horrifically bad for long term survivability. You think climate change is an extinction level event? Try a gamma ray blast from a pulsar.

All you’ve really demonstrated is that you don’t understand technology specifically renewables and nuclear. There is a real concern with lack of rare materials, but not for renewables. The real issue is computers. Modern computers and especially smartphones need a lot of rare things. So constantly replacing your smartphone might not be practical anymore, and things like battery life and processing speed might actually get worse for a while as we are forced to use alternative materials. Not really a huge deal in the scheme of things though.

Also thinking the rich elite are the only people consuming things at an unsustainable rate is hilarious. They use more resources per person obviously, but the number of them is also really small. If you actually looked into it you would probably find that lost of the consuming of resources is to support the lower and middle classes. Don’t get me wrong oil executives are a real issue because of how they effect government policy and the behaviour of the rest of society. They do deserve a significant share of the blame. Not every rich person is an oil executive though. Having ultra rich people around is bad but this isn’t the reason why.

The earth receives just over 1 billion watts of raw energy from the sun daily. Using that energy to boil steam to turn tubines caps that energy generation ability to 105,566,992 watts of power if we capture all the solar radiation that hits earth.

Humanity currently uses 17.5 terrawatts of power daily. How do you make up the 99% shortfall? Little hint, wind and hydroelectric isn’t enough to make up that gap. Nuclear is currently our only option outside of asteroid mining.

Edited: I read the number wrong.