Rating: 7.5/10.
The War Below: Lithium, Copper, and the Global Battle to Power Our Lives The War Below by Ernest Scheyder
Book by a journalist about the struggles between mining companies and those who oppose mining projects, mostly in the US. Lithium and a variety of other minerals, such as rare earth metals, are essential for the production of many technologies, particularly for the green energy revolution, due to lithium’s role in batteries and therefore is essential for our transition away from fossil fuels. However, there is a dependence on countries outside of the US, like China and the Congo, for many of these minerals, which poses a geopolitical risk. Consequently, there is an incentive for the US to prioritize domestic mining. Nevertheless, mining has numerous environmental issues, and the US is one of the most challenging places to obtain mining permits. This book discusses many such efforts in recent years and how most of them have stalled for years and ultimately failed.
Opposition to mining projects comes in many different forms, and in some cases, it is difficult to discern their true intentions. For instance, the Resolution Copper project in Arizona encountered issues when it was claimed that the mining site was sacred land for the Apache tribe. However, upon closer investigation, many others claimed that it was not a particularly important religious site, and the indigenous people made efforts to demonstrate sacred rituals ostensibly in a showy way to lay their claim to the land. Projects often experienced different approvals from presidential administrations; for example, Trump was pro-mining and approved many projects but often could not do so quickly enough as his term was relatively short. When Biden took office, his administration rejected many of the permits. There are often concerns about environmental damage in a mining project, as the dust from the mine might harm ecosystems and there is a risk of spills from tailings ponds, which contain lots of heavy metals, into the water system in lake areas such as in Minnesota.
An interesting case is Patrick Donnelly, a botanist who decided it was his life’s work to protect a particular plant species – Tiehm’s buckwheat is threatened by a proposed lithium mine in Nevada. It seems that his intention is genuinely about the preservation of this species and not using it as a weapon to block mining. A more selfish example is plain NIMBYism concerning a proposed lithium mine in North Carolina – unlike in the western U.S., where land is often owned by the government, the land in North Carolina is owned by hundreds of individual landowners. These landowners believe in the transition towards green energy, but they simply want the mine to be located anywhere else except in their area. They organized petitions against the project, which was eventually abandoned after many delays.
Government decisions about approval or rejection can instantly make or break a mining company, and in cases of delays, the company is usually forced into bankruptcy and auctions of its assets at low prices. A case in point is Molycorp; after being fined for improper waste handling, facing poor market conditions, and experiencing delays in acquiring permits for projects, it went bankrupt and had to auction off its mining permit. Their permits were bought by Chinese investors, for a relatively low amount, which is embarrassing to the government when this happens.
There have been success stories as well. Thacker’s Pass in northern Nevada survived many attempts to kill it by conservationist indigenous groups, and one reason it survived is that many environmentalists approve of it since they recognize the need for lithium production for the green energy transition. Another success story involved restarting a mine in Idaho, and this was easier because the mining site already existed, rather than filing for approval for a new site, even though when the mine was built, the environmental regulations were basically nonexistent.
Entrepreneurial attempts to extract these metals in ways other than mining are emerging. For example, a startup is trying to recycle old batteries to recover their lithium, and they are about to become the biggest lithium producer in America since it is so difficult to get mining permits in the country. Another attempt is to extract metals from brine, which has less environmental impact than mining, but the technology is uncertain. Elon Musk is interested in this type of technology since he is so dependent on sourcing lithium for his electric vehicle batteries. Some countries are expanding elsewhere; EnergyX, for instance, is trying to set up operations in Bolivia to extract lithium from the salt fields. However, this is also a challenging extraction process due to the chemistry involved, and the country has poor infrastructure and political discontent due to the poor optics of foreigners extracting its mineral wealth.
The book concludes with the project by Ioneer involving Tiehm’s buckwheat, the endangered plant threatened by a lithium mine. The company first tried to hire botanists to perform scientific studies to prove that the plant could be transported elsewhere, but it turned out that it relied on the lithium-rich soil and could not be transplanted. Evidence suggested that it could not be relocated, which caused the species to become labeled as endangered. As the book is published, the company is trying to find a way to shield the plants from mining disturbances since they cannot be relocated.
Overall, a good set of case studies about battles between mining companies and anti-mining groups, which prevents them from obtaining permits. Since it is written by a journalist and focuses on people and narrative storytelling, one weakness is that it does not explain the legal framework or regulatory processes of how these approvals work, or much in terms of scientific or economic analysis. The book also focuses mainly on projects in the United States, with little mention of any mining activities outside the country.
