First Quantum Minerals operates mines from Panama to Australia. They dig up lots of stuff you and I use daily: copper mostly, and also zinc, cobalt, nickel, molybdenum, silver, and gold. The company produces more than 775,000 long tons of copper yearly and employs almost 20,000 in places like Las Cruces, Spain, Pyhäjärvi, Finland, Akjoujt, Mauritania, and the Rize Province in Turkey and the North-Western Province in Zambia. All places on your potential vacation spots, right? Well, probably not. Some are rather remote, really off the beaten path, but that mine in Central America is very near the Pan-American Highway, and its location affords eco-warriors an ideal opportunity to protest the company’s operations by blocking the major north-south highway. How ideal? Say about $80 million in daily losses to blockades the protestors set across the road.
Roadblock for Mother Earth
The roadblock of the Pan-American Highway has now cost more than the loss of millions to businesses. Panama’s schools have shut down for over a week, and now two protestors are dead, shot as they protested by a frustrated Kenneth Darlington, described as a lawyer and professor with US-Panamanian citizenships as the story by Jesse O’Neill in the New York Post relates. * Heads up here: Standing, sitting, or lying in the middle of a highway isn’t as good an idea as it might initially seem in an age of road rage.
But What’s a Company to Do?
Here’s a message from First Quantum Minerals’ CEO Tristan Pascall:
“The current high cost of energy has highlighted the importance of energy security, and emphasised [sic.] the importance of the energy transition. The metals that we mine are fundamental to this. Without more copper and nickel, the world won’t be able to achieve the increased use of renewable power and electric vehicles that are required for global decarbonisation [sic.]. New projects will ultimately be required.”
Yep, if you want the world to be carbon-free yet still electrified, you’re going to need a metal that facilitates power transmission. Copper’s ideal. And as far as those EVs might travel, the other metals First Quantum mines are also important; thus, the mining of cobalt and nickel that are essential to their manufacture.
The demand exists. The company fulfills that demand. And no temporary roadblocks will decrease that demand as a world led by other eco-warriors transitions to green power that unfortunately is both on the agenda and off the agenda of the very people who blocked the Pan-American Highway. Apparently, the demand for “green energy” will increase, and First Minerals intends to take advantage of a materials gap that is more extensive than the famous 80 kilometers (50 mi) of the Darién Gap on that roadblocked highway.
Having and Eating One’s Cake
Poor eco-warriors! In their efforts to “save the planet,” they come up against a stressful dilemma framed in a single question they must ask. “Do we save a locality from the real and supposed ravages of mining essential metals while depriving the burgeoning clean energy industry of its essential metals?” Doesn’t that question sum up the problem all environmental warriors face? It’s akin to trying to keep the cake one is eating.
And the warriors aren’t the only ones with the dilemma. The mining company has a policy of environmentally friendly mining practices—within reason and responsibility to shareholders, of course. Pascall includes one of those “we care about the environment and local community” statements in his online letter, and he relates the company’s projects to turn it into a “green company.” Without those statements, the company would face increasing criticism. And the renewal of the company’s contract comes at increased costs. The Panamanian government will get more moolah from the renewal contract that permits continued mining.
All this seems like a win-win-win scenario that the eco-warriors ignore. The host country gets money, the company produces more essential metals and continues to make a profit for shareholders, the many employees and transport companies make money by mining and moving those metals, and the eco-warriors get a promise for eco-friendliness backed by some new technologies that are, in turn, supported by the very metals whose extraction they now attempt to block.
Be Careful What You Wish For
Energy. Can’t live without it and can’t diminish the demand for it in a growing world population. Ask the next eco-warrior intent on shutting down all forms of energy because they require raw materials drawn from Mother Earth how they intend to energize a population of eight billion. Ask what a world of inadequate, but expensive, energy would look like. Those raw materials First Quantum Minerals extracts are essential to civilization as it now exists across the planet.
As energy becomes more expensive, look for the many to suffer because those few eco-warriors hold onto or wish for some ideal not backed by the realities of life. Humans have always exploited natural resources. Without that exploitation neither you nor I would probably exist; the eco-warriors themselves might not exist.
Americans, caught in the middle between the eco-warriors of Panama and the mining company in Canada, have recently learned about the costs of energy when the ideal overrides the real. Biden’s shutting down American energy independence has had a deleterious effect on individuals’ personal finances. Those who support his attempt at a rapid withdrawal from fossil fuels have, unless they are immune by virtue of wealth, suffered increasing costs from the policy they supported in 2020. How a large population has endorsed energy dependence and expensive “green” energy remains a mystery to me. And how some of those support shutting the very mines that would make green energy possible is an even greater mystery.
Sure, I want to “save the planet”; it’s the only world I’ll ever know. But any Ideal has to be tempered by the Real. And any environmental policy needs to be framed in a context of humanity’s needs. Do mines threaten a locality? Sure. Do they supply the world with what it demands? Sure, also.
What’s the alternative to extracting essential metals?
*https://nypost.com/2023/11/08/news/gunman-seen-shooting-dead-eco-protesters-in-panama/
**Https://first-quantum.com. and other websites linked to First Quantum Minerals, Ltd.
Roadblock for Mother Earth
The roadblock of the Pan-American Highway has now cost more than the loss of millions to businesses. Panama’s schools have shut down for over a week, and now two protestors are dead, shot as they protested by a frustrated Kenneth Darlington, described as a lawyer and professor with US-Panamanian citizenships as the story by Jesse O’Neill in the New York Post relates. * Heads up here: Standing, sitting, or lying in the middle of a highway isn’t as good an idea as it might initially seem in an age of road rage.
But What’s a Company to Do?
Here’s a message from First Quantum Minerals’ CEO Tristan Pascall:
“The current high cost of energy has highlighted the importance of energy security, and emphasised [sic.] the importance of the energy transition. The metals that we mine are fundamental to this. Without more copper and nickel, the world won’t be able to achieve the increased use of renewable power and electric vehicles that are required for global decarbonisation [sic.]. New projects will ultimately be required.”
Yep, if you want the world to be carbon-free yet still electrified, you’re going to need a metal that facilitates power transmission. Copper’s ideal. And as far as those EVs might travel, the other metals First Quantum mines are also important; thus, the mining of cobalt and nickel that are essential to their manufacture.
The demand exists. The company fulfills that demand. And no temporary roadblocks will decrease that demand as a world led by other eco-warriors transitions to green power that unfortunately is both on the agenda and off the agenda of the very people who blocked the Pan-American Highway. Apparently, the demand for “green energy” will increase, and First Minerals intends to take advantage of a materials gap that is more extensive than the famous 80 kilometers (50 mi) of the Darién Gap on that roadblocked highway.
Having and Eating One’s Cake
Poor eco-warriors! In their efforts to “save the planet,” they come up against a stressful dilemma framed in a single question they must ask. “Do we save a locality from the real and supposed ravages of mining essential metals while depriving the burgeoning clean energy industry of its essential metals?” Doesn’t that question sum up the problem all environmental warriors face? It’s akin to trying to keep the cake one is eating.
And the warriors aren’t the only ones with the dilemma. The mining company has a policy of environmentally friendly mining practices—within reason and responsibility to shareholders, of course. Pascall includes one of those “we care about the environment and local community” statements in his online letter, and he relates the company’s projects to turn it into a “green company.” Without those statements, the company would face increasing criticism. And the renewal of the company’s contract comes at increased costs. The Panamanian government will get more moolah from the renewal contract that permits continued mining.
All this seems like a win-win-win scenario that the eco-warriors ignore. The host country gets money, the company produces more essential metals and continues to make a profit for shareholders, the many employees and transport companies make money by mining and moving those metals, and the eco-warriors get a promise for eco-friendliness backed by some new technologies that are, in turn, supported by the very metals whose extraction they now attempt to block.
Be Careful What You Wish For
Energy. Can’t live without it and can’t diminish the demand for it in a growing world population. Ask the next eco-warrior intent on shutting down all forms of energy because they require raw materials drawn from Mother Earth how they intend to energize a population of eight billion. Ask what a world of inadequate, but expensive, energy would look like. Those raw materials First Quantum Minerals extracts are essential to civilization as it now exists across the planet.
As energy becomes more expensive, look for the many to suffer because those few eco-warriors hold onto or wish for some ideal not backed by the realities of life. Humans have always exploited natural resources. Without that exploitation neither you nor I would probably exist; the eco-warriors themselves might not exist.
Americans, caught in the middle between the eco-warriors of Panama and the mining company in Canada, have recently learned about the costs of energy when the ideal overrides the real. Biden’s shutting down American energy independence has had a deleterious effect on individuals’ personal finances. Those who support his attempt at a rapid withdrawal from fossil fuels have, unless they are immune by virtue of wealth, suffered increasing costs from the policy they supported in 2020. How a large population has endorsed energy dependence and expensive “green” energy remains a mystery to me. And how some of those support shutting the very mines that would make green energy possible is an even greater mystery.
Sure, I want to “save the planet”; it’s the only world I’ll ever know. But any Ideal has to be tempered by the Real. And any environmental policy needs to be framed in a context of humanity’s needs. Do mines threaten a locality? Sure. Do they supply the world with what it demands? Sure, also.
What’s the alternative to extracting essential metals?
*https://nypost.com/2023/11/08/news/gunman-seen-shooting-dead-eco-protesters-in-panama/
**Https://first-quantum.com. and other websites linked to First Quantum Minerals, Ltd.
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