Digging for victory?

To address the climate crisis requires a root-and-branch overhaul of the global energy system. Fossil fuels and combustion engines need to be consigned to history; many everyday consumer items, from cars to leaf blowers, have to be reconfigured to run on electricity provided by solar, wind and other renewables.

In the US, the Biden administration has placed a green industrial policy at the top of its policy agenda. His government wants to decarbonize the economy, reduce dependence on China for critical minerals and rejuvenate the country’s long- neglected industrial heartlands and rural communities. It is hard to see how these aims can be achieved without opening a series of new mines for the copper, lithium and rare earth metals that lie beneath the vast American landscapes. Yet the environmental costs of this will be high. Mines often leach toxic chemicals into water supplies, deplete groundwater and destroy biodiverse habitats. Many mining sites are on Indigenous lands and, while the industry offers deprived communities economic opportunities, several prospective projects threaten to jeopardize sacred sites.

In The War Below Ernest Scheyder, a senior correspondent at Reuters, lays these tensions bare. We learn many fascinating facts along the way (who knew that the battery in a single electric vehicle contains more than a mile of copper wire, or that leaf blowers emit significant levels of pollutants?), but, more importantly, we learn of the tough environmental and societal trade-offs that need to be negotiated on the path to a greener economy.

Among the many characters we meet is the Houston-based James Calaway, whose middle name, Derrick, reflects his family’s history in oil. Deeply worried about the impact of climate change, he has abandoned fossil fuels for lithium, determined to do his bit in the shift to electric vehicles: “It was not morally okay for me to continue to be devoting my life to producing oil and gas that was going to harm the planet for my children and grandchildren. I just couldn’t get myself to continue to do that”. He is delighted when vast deposits of the element are discovered in Rhyolite Ridge in Nevada, fewer than 100 miles from a planned Tesla gigafactory. But he then discovers that the area is home to Tiehm’s buckwheat, a rare plant species that, as Patrick Donnelly, a staunch environmentalist points out, would probably become extinct if the mine were to go ahead.

In Superior, Arizona, the mayor, Mila Besich, waits in anticipation of the government issuing a permit to Rio Tinto to develop a new copper mine. The rusting, abandoned infrastructure serves as a reminder that the town was once a thriving mining hub, and Besich has negotiated hard with Rio Tinto, aiming to ensure that the community really benefits from the mine, thereby reversing decades of economic decline. But the community is divided. Led by Wendsler Nosie, many members of the Apache community, whose ancestors were evicted from their lands to make way for the original mines, are vehemently opposed: the new mine would destroy a sacred religious site.

Scheyder’s vivid anecdotes bring the American landscape to life, including tales of the intense heat and humidity of underground mine shafts, and of hikes in pristine wildernesses. He also neatly lays out the conflicts. If new mines are blocked, then the US risks becoming dependent on other countries for its supply of critical minerals. This would also push the environmental costs on to other countries – including in the developing world – with potentially less robust safety and environmental standards. But to push ahead will cause enormous damage. Max Wilbert, an environmentalist leading the fight against the Thacker Pass lithium mine in Nevada, argues that the only way to preserve the climate and biodiversity is “a planned contraction of the economy”.

The War Below provides valuable insights into the complex decisions we will have to grapple with on the path to a green economy. There are no easy answers, and successive US administrations have so far struggled to forge a coherent policy. But there are also glimmers of hope. Spurred by an unlikely partnership between Michael Kowalski (the then CEO of the jewellery retailer Tiffany & Co) and Steve D’Esposito (the then president of the environmental organization Earthworks), a coalition of mining companies, environmentalists, Indigenous communities, labour unions and investors formed the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance (IRMA) in the mid-2000s. After a decade of intense dialogue, which often broke down due to dissenting views, it reached agreement on a standard for assessing the environmental and social sustainability of mines. Electric vehicle manufacturers, including BMW and Ford, started to pledge to source from IRMA-accredited mines, and in 2023 the first mines underwent IRMA audits. These are small but important steps to a greener future.

Emily Jones is Associate Professor of Public Policy and Director of the Global Economic Governance Programme, Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford

The post Digging for victory? appeared first on TLS.