Between 1900 and today, the quantity of stone one needed to move and process to produce a single tonne of copper rose from 50 tonnes to 800 tonnes. The amount of water consumed along the way went from 75 cubic metres to 150. The energy needed for all this work rose from around 250KWh to over 4,000KWh. Yet here is the most striking datapoint of all: over that period, rather than increasing, the inflation-adjusted copper price was essentially flat.
