Digging For Minerals

 

"The War Below

By Ernest Scheyder

One Signal/Atria, 384 pages, $30

Civilization would not exist were it not for miners. Every year the world's oldest industry supplies hundreds of megatons of the primary metals and minerals that are essential to all subsequent industries -- from medical devices to kitchen appliances, aircraft, toys, power plants, computers and cars. Hence it's consequential when the governments of Europe and the U.S. implement policies requiring that global mining expand, and soon, by 400% to 7,000%.

Those policies are meant to force a transition away from the oil, natural gas and coal that supply 80% of global energy. But it's an unavoidable fact that building the favored transition machines -- wind turbines, solar panels, electric cars -- will require astonishing quantities of minerals to produce the same amount of energy. That reality is the "bug not a feature" of so-called green energy.

Of course, our planet is resource-rich. The theoretical magnitude of Earth's mineral abundance could supply any imaginable demand for centuries to come. That isn't the challenge. Instead, it's timing. The last time global mining production expanded at this scale it took place across eight decades -- from 1940 to the present -- not the one or two decades the transitionists imagine.

The other challenge involves people. Mining has always been as much about people as it has about geology, technology and money. In "The War Below: Lithium, Copper, and the Global Battle to Power Our Lives," Ernest Scheyder highlights the myriad difficulties faced by the people who build mines, as well as those hurt by or opposed to them. As Mr. Scheyder notes, mining is "dirty work." That's no invective; it's just reality.

Mr. Scheyder, a journalist, travels from Arizona to Minnesota, from Nevada to Idaho, from Washington, D.C., to Bolivia to document the views of those who are for or against mining. He's sympathetic to the cultural, historical, aesthetic and environmental constraints that are unavoidable and often intractable when mining is at stake. He focuses on the social and political dynamics that accompany big mining projects because, as he writes, there's "no way around the fact that mines are gargantuan creations that maim the Earth's surface." He makes clear that his goal isn't to question the need for more mines but to understand "whether these lands should be dug up in an attempt to defuse climate change," especially when some lands are considered sacred by their neighbors and inhabitants.

Mr. Scheyder guides us through the troubled history of mining and revisits some of the conflicts associated with mining over the centuries. The example that begins and ends his book is a small buckwheat plant in Nevada, on the site of a proposed mine, that leads him to ask: "What matters more, the plant or the lithium beneath it?"

He highlights America's schizophrenic approach to mining -- especially the current administration's policies. He notes the millions of dollars of federal grants that have been offered to help some favored mines while the same administration cancels permits that took years and millions of dollars in private money to pursue.

Such political and social impediments to expanding mining are what frame "The War Below." This is not a book for learning about mining technology or the feasibility of transition. Mr. Scheyder accepts the claims, however flawed, that, for example, "personal automobiles that burn gasoline or diesel fuel are making the planet warmer" and that a minerals-centric energy transition would mitigate that. Even so, one suspects that Mr. Scheyder, along with others who subscribe to the transition narrative, doesn't fully appreciate the scale of minerals production and disruption proposed.

Global mining today involves excavating and moving a quantity of rock each year equivalent to the tonnage of 7,000 Great Pyramids. Transition aspirations would require a tonnage north of 50,000 pyramids annually. Juxtapose that reality with Mr. Scheyder's observation that "despite attempts to find alternate ways to produce metals for the green energy transition," there is "no way around the fact that mining is loud, dangerous, and disruptive and will remain so for the foreseeable future."

Count me among those who believe technology can overcome many such challenges. But progress in industrial domains takes far more time than most forecasters or governments expect. Meanwhile, as Mr. Scheyder notes, China has become the dominant global supplier of energy minerals and controls roughly 80% of the world's electric-vehicle battery market.

Mr. Scheyder touches only briefly on a lynchpin issue: the need for more miners in America. He writes that in 2023 a major copper-mine expansion project in Arizona failed not because of regulations or protests but "because the company didn't have enough workers." Much of the existing workforce is aging out. Meanwhile, the number of students pursuing mining engineering in America has collapsed. Last year the U.S. saw 600 such enrollments, while China had more than one million. It's telling, though, that Mr. Scheyder's book begins and ends with the story of a botanist, not an engineer.

If there was any silver lining to the global lockdowns of 2020, it was our reawakening to the importance of work deemed "essential," the kinds of jobs for the "work-from-somewheres," positions in which if people don't show up -- notably in supply chains -- cascades of essential products or services cease to exist. Now comes a similar reawakening about mining, with books and articles written by the "work-from-anywheres."

Mr. Scheyder introduces his book by noting that he previously reported on "another energy transition -- the U.S. shale revolution," and that his new assignment to follow the story of minerals was a chance to cover a second "revolution." But this is what the news media seldom mentions: The rise in American privately funded oil-and-gas shale production has added 150% as much energy supply as the combined output from all the world's subsidized wind and solar sources.

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Mr. Mills, a senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, is a partner at Montrose Lane, an energy fund, and the author of "The Cloud Revolution."" [1]

1.  Digging For Minerals. Mills, Mark P.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 04 Mar 2024: A.15.