Our plan for the planet can't be the lesser of two evils

Newsroom

08-05-2025

Opinion: The vexed issue of the mining and material requirements for a renewable energy transition has been making the news.
The well-known green growth and clean energy champion Hannah Ritchie claimed that clean energy requires substantially less mining and material use than our existing fossil fuel energy systems. This made the news globally and was picked up in New Zealand with similar claims appearing in LinkedIn posts, blogs and social media posts from Rewiring Aotearoa.
This is one of these messy lesser-of-two-evils arguments I usually try to steer clear of because I can see that 'less harm' (and I will argue here that the 'less harm' claim is far from settled) is turned into a 'better for the planet' meme on social media. This lesser-of-two-evils meme is often used by companies as a greenwashing tactic.
The point missed when this argument is used is that growth, regardless of its colour (green, black, or purple) requires taking ever more from a stressed finite planet and this is no longer an option. The historian and philosopher Hannah Arendt nailed my thoughts when she said: 'Those who choose the lesser evil forget very quickly that they chose evil.'
The reason I don't want to get into a clean vs dirty energy debate is that it's not an either/or choice, and it isn't just about the climate crisis. The life-supporting capacity of the planet is already teetering on collapse with multiple existential threats reaching tipping points and any more extraction, no matter how well intentioned, is not viable.
Biophysical limits are real and non-negotiable – they simply cannot be compromised, regardless of whether the extraction is for 'carbon-free energy' or anything else. The goal of electrification to address climate change is laudable. The problem is that it's being seen in isolation, ignoring the reality that climate change is just one of a raft of crises, all symptoms of ecological overshoot.
Even the New York Times pointed out on Earth Day that: 'Climate change is a symptom of a larger issue: ecological overshoot, the fact that humans are consuming resources faster than they can regenerate and producing more waste and pollution than nature can absorb.'
Now to the specifics of the materials/mining argument. The Rewiring Aotearoa claim that low-carbon energy uses 1500 times less material than fossil fuels is based on the fact that in 2022 the world used 15 billion tonnes of materials for coal, oil, and gas and only 10 million tonnes for low-carbon energy. At face value, this sounds convincing but dig a little deeper and it is far from established. To reiterate, I think it's a moot point comparing replacing fossil fuels with 'clean energy' because neither option is feasible for a living planet.
First, it's not a fair comparison given the low-carbon energy input in 2022 was a fraction of the energy consumed by humans on the planet: in that year 91 percent of global primary energy came from fossil fuels (just 2.5 percent from wind and solar).
Second, the 10 million tonnes quoted for low-carbon energy is just counting the weight of the minerals themselves and misses the crucial reality that the harm is how much material was mined and processed to get the final product. Not just how much mineral was mined, but also how many forests were cut down, roads built, rivers and soil and air polluted to extract those minerals. To say nothing about the social costs to poor and indigenous communities. Most of these minerals are at very low concentrations in rocks, meaning that when the waste rock or overburden mining required (measured as the rock-to-metal ratio) is taken into account the 10 million tonnes quoted by Rewiring Aotearoa then becomes billions of tonnes. This point was conceded by Hannah Ritchie in a follow-up article to one she originally wrote in January 2023.
Finally, and I think the most crucial point – and one that almost never makes its way into energy transition discussions or modelling – is that the amount of material mined per unit of metal (the rock-to-metal ratio) isn't a constant: it has always, and will always, keep rising. This is a result of the simple fact that we start off mining all the easy-to-get metal and minerals and then over time must move to ever lower ore concentrations.
An example is copper. It is vital to an energy transition and the average ore grade globally has decreased approximately by 25 percent in just 10 years. In that same period, the total energy consumption for mining copper increased by 46 percent. Chile, the world's leading copper producer, increased fossil fuel and electricity consumption per unit between 2001 and 2017 by 130 percent and 32 percent respectively.
This means even without the huge increases required to replace all the fossil-fuel powered infrastructure and energy consumption growth, more and more material must be mined every year using more and more energy just to maintain metal production.
If that wasn't sobering enough, the fossil fuels used for almost all the mining, processing, and transport of the materials is undergoing the same conundrum of decline. The fossil fuel energy return on energy invested is declining fast, thus ever more and more fossil fuels are burnt to supply the same amount of energy. These two enigmas act on each other, meaning exponentially more harm is done just to meet current demand, let alone growth.
Behind the whole debate around materials is the all-pervasive assumption that we must do everything and anything – no matter the risk – to maintain status quo, which is ever-increasing consumption.
So are we going to dig up what's left of the planet and threaten the very life supporting systems we can't live without to power ever more gadgets? Will we jeopardise our futures for the sake of artificial intelligence and data centres to hold our pet and family holiday pictures? When will we shape our lives around what the planet can support rather than try to make it give us the lifestyles we have become accustomed to?
Instead of trying to keep up supply, surely we must look at the energy and material demand side and reduce consumption to a level that the planet can support. The fossil fuel-powered lives of excess we in the wealthy world see as normal are not. The reduction in consumption required in the wealthy world is radical – but also necessary to meet biophysical limits. This will not be convenient, but we must realise that how we in the wealthy world live is radical.
I acknowledge the distinct perspectives present in energy transition discussions. Mine emphasises the fundamental ecological view that immediate radical action is critical for us to have a liveable planet. Others take a more political 'art of the possible' position, focusing on currently achievable steps and public consensus. Despite these differing approaches, there is an underlying alignment in the intention and that is to navigate the challenges of a civilisation in crisis.