Cargoism, then, covers everything from the seemingly reasonable belief that solar panels and other forms of renewable energy can replace fossil fuels (they can’

Cargoism, then, covers everything from the seemingly reasonable belief that solar panels and other forms of renewable energy can replace fossil fuels (they can’t – as Moriarty & Honnery point out, “an energy source can be renewable without being ecologically sustainable”)... Searching for that phrase led me to http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02604027.2017.1357930 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02604027.2017.135... which rationalizes the claim with "Solar energy may be unlimited, but this does not guarantee system sustainability for RE. Instead, we run the risk of replacing non-renewable fossil fuels with another set of non-renewable metals and minerals (Vidal, Goffé, & Arndt, 2013). Greatly increased use of RE, especially wind and solar, will require similar increases in many rare minerals (Bardi, 2014)." This is a reference to Ugo Bardi's book "Extracted: How the Quest for Mineral Wealth Is Plundering the Planet." I don't doubt that Bardi has made such statements in his book. He'd be far from the first to propagate this nonsense. Wind turbines and solar cells can be made with rare minerals, but they do not require rare minerals. The vast majority of solar cells do not require gallium, indium, or tellurium (the usual rare elements cited for solar), and the majority of wind turbines do not require rare earth elements. Some wind generators use rare-earth-containing permanent magnet generators, but most use electromagnets made with common copper. EDIT: I was able to peek inside Bardi's book via Google Books, and he actually makes the same point I just did. It's actually the opposite of what Moriarty & Honnery claim in citing him. Page 239: "We have also seen that technologies such as modern wind power, solar concentration, and photovoltaics have reasonably high EROEIs and can be manufactured without a critical need of raw materials."