> fossil fuels require much more mining and drilling than clean energy technologies. Today the world mines 8 billion tons of coal every year, whereas the clean energy transition is estimated to require around 3.5 billion tons of minerals in total over the next three decades.
So, that answers the general mining comparison, but that doesn't answer many of the other points, including things like the impact of refining (which produces chemicals far more toxic than just burning coal), the estimates of global mineral availability, and the sheer number of power generation facilities to produce (at a minimum) comparable levels of power. And that's without including things like empowering oppressive regimes like China's CCP and the Congolese government because we are forced to by minerals from them for many of these solutions.
