Production of the vital metal will top out and decline within decades, according to a new model that may hold lessons for other resources

Excerpt from the article

IF ELECTRONS ARE THE LIFEBLOOD OF A….

……modern economy, copper makes up its blood vessels. In cables, wires, and contacts, cop-per is at the core of the electrical distribu-tion system, from power stations to the deli-cate electronics that can display this page of Science. A small car has 20 kilograms of copper in everything from its starter motor to the radiator; hybrid cars have twice that. But even in the face of exponentially rising consumption—reaching 17 million metric tons in 2012—miners have for 10,000 years met the world’ s demand for copper. But perhaps not for much longer. A group of resource specialists has taken the first shot at projecting how much more copper miners will wring from the planet. In their model runs, described this month in the jour-nal Resources, Conservation and Recycling, production peaks by about midcentury

….even if copper is more abundant than most geologists believe. That would drive prices sky-high, trigger increased recycling, and force inferior substitutes for copper on the marketplace