Source: Bare (2012) Environmentalists win review of two more plants near Rosemont copper mine. Arizona Capitol times.
I could overwhelm you with world-wide trillions of tons of mining waste and how China has rendered 20% of its farmland too toxic to grow crops (BBC 2014), but let’s just zoom in on one mine in Arizona. In 2022, 13 years after the Rosemont Copper Mine near Tuscon, AZ was proposed in 2009, was finally shut down after strong opposition.
Yet clearly mines need to be built to make the transition to renewables ASAP. If world peak oil was in 2018 (EIA 2022) time’s a wastin’. Energy will get more expensive and scarcer as it declines. Mining will need increasing amounts of energy as ore quality continues to decline and remaining deposits further away and deeper, as well as the energy to crush ore, smelt metals out and fabricate them into parts. All of these steps require the high heat of fossil fuel energy, especially coal, for which there aren’t alternative electric or hydrogen processes and transportation. The first generation will have to be made with fossil fuels, not the electricity from yet to be built solar, wind, and nuclear power plants.
Michaux (2022a, 2022b) has made some rough calculations of the electricity, hydrogen, and metals to make them in an energy transition to 100% renewable energy by 2050 with wind, solar, nuclear, hydro, geothermal, and biowaste generation. It’s a work in progress, but the best estimate I’ve seen since he included not just the electric grid like most researchers (i.e. Jacobson 2011), but the electricity to replace the fossil energy used by transportation, manufacturing, and heating of buildings and homes.
Then he calculated the metals required to build these 586,000 average sized power stations in addition to the world’s 46,400 to generate the additional electricity and electrolysis of 200.1 million tonnes of hydrogen to power heavy duty transportation and manufacturing.
Here are just a few of the showstopping metals. At current rates of production, it would take 9921 years for lithium, 7101 years for vanadium, 1733 years for cobalt, 400 for nickel, 189 for copper and so on to build the renewables to replace fossil fuels by 2050.
Even if you managed to open hundreds of thousands of mines to do so, it takes 20 years on average, and you will Hit the Wall of Showstopper Reserves. Copper has 800,000,000 tonnes of reserves, but 4,575,000,000,000 tonnes are needed. Nickel 95 million tones, 940 million tonnes required. Lithium 22 million tonnes, 944 million tonnes needed.
The battle began in 2009 when Canadian Hudbay Minerals first proposed the 3500-acre Rosemont copper mine project in Pima County, Arizona. Over 1.9 billion tons of toxic mining waste would have buried National Forest land and dozens of prehistoric tribal sites. The toxic mining tailings from a mile wide pit in the Santa Rita Mountains would send toxins into Cienega Creek, which replenishes Tucson’s groundwater basin.
Studies found the mine would damage some of the highest-quality streams and ecosystems of the desert Southwest, polluting 18 miles of 154 ephemeral streams and two wetlands. The half-mile deep pit would also get into the regional aquifer, reversing ground water flows and depleting streams and springs forever, with repercussions felt as far away as Tucson. They sued and battled for 13 years to stop this from happening, invoking the Clean Water Act (CBD 2022).
But the U.S. Forest Service approved the mine, which proceeded to violate the Clean Water Act by filling in streams to prepare the site for mining.
Earth Justice, representing Native American tribes Tohono O’odham Nation, Pascua Yaqui Tribe, and Hopi got the mine shut down in 2019 by U.S. District Judge James Soto calling the approval of the U.S. Forest Service “arbitrary and capricious” (EJ 2022).
The same judge ruled in favor of the Center for Biological diversity in 2020 against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service which had approved the mine despite threatening endangered species such as jaguars, northern Mexican garter snakes, Chiricahua leopard frogs, fish, and birds (CBD 2020)
Many Environmental groups also sued, including the Sierra Club and Center for Biological Diversity (CBD 2022), plus additional opposition from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
So the U.S. Justice Department (!?) and the mine appealed. And finally in May of 2022 the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of appeals rejected them and upheld the ruling blocking the mile-wide open pit copper mine.
But is this really the end? If the U.S. continues to elect corrupt and fascist authoritarian judges and legislators, watch out. These so-called “conservatives” could care less about abortion and gay marriage. Their real concern is to end environmental regulations so rich corporations to rape and pillage the earth.
Sure, mines might more easily be opened in China and other nations, but the U.S. is desperate to mine as many metals and make the components in America to secure America’s Clean Energy Supply Chain (USDOE 2022). The technologies include pharmaceuticals, carbon capture materials, electric grid including transformers and high voltage direct current (HVDC), energy storage, fuel cells and electrolyzers, hydropower including pumped storage hydropower (PSH), neodymium magnets, nuclear energy, rare earth and platinum group metals and other catalysts, semiconductors, solar photovoltaics (PV), and wind.
President Biden’s Executive order 14017 states that: “The United States needs resilient, diverse, and secure supply chains to ensure our economic prosperity and national security. Pandemics and other biological threats, cyber-attacks, climate shocks and extreme weather events, terrorist attacks, geopolitical and economic competition, and other conditions can reduce critical manufacturing capacity and the availability and integrity of critical goods, products, and services. Resilient American supply chains will revitalize and rebuild domestic manufacturing capacity, maintain America’s competitive edge in research and development, and create well-paying jobs” (WH 2022).
NIMBY in the news:
2023 Panama orders halt to new mining projects as street protests grow
Alice Friedemann www.energyskeptic.com Author of Life After Fossil Fuels: A Reality Check on Alternative Energy; When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation”, Barriers to Making Algal Biofuels, & “Crunch! Whole Grain Artisan Chips and Crackers”. Women in ecology Podcasts: WGBH, Jore, Planet: Critical, Crazy Town, Collapse Chronicles, Derrick Jensen, Practical Prepping, Kunstler 253 &278, Peak Prosperity, Index of best energyskeptic posts
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References
BBC (2014) Report: One fIfth of China’s soil contaminated. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-27076645
CBD (2020) Judge Overturns Wildlife Agency’s Approval of Rosemont Copper Mine in Arizona. Biological Opinion Failed to Protect Endangered Jaguars. Center for Biological Diversity.
CBD (2022) 60-Day Notice of Intent to Bring Citizen Suit for Rosemont Copper Company’s Violations of the Clean Water Act at the Copper World Expansion Mine. Center for Biological Diversity.
EIA (2022) International Energy Statistics. Petroleum and other liquids. Data Options. U.S. Energy Information Administration.
EJ (2022) 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Upholds Landmark Ruling Blocking Arizona Copper Mine. Earth Justice.
Jacobson MZ, Delucchi MA (2011) Providing all global energy with wind, water, and solar power, Part I and Part II. Energy Policy 39.
Michaux S (2022a) Assessment of the extra capacity required of alternative energy electrical power systems to completely replace fossil fuels. GTK Geological survey of Finland.
Michaux S (2022b) Assessment of the physical requirements to globally phase out fossil fuels. GTK Geological survey of Finland.
USDOE (2022) DOE Releases First-Ever Comprehensive Strategy to Secure America’s Clean Energy Supply Chain. In response to President Biden’s Executive order 14017, America’s Supply Chains. U.S. Department of Energy
WH (2022) Executive Order on America’s Supply Chains 14017. Whitehouse.gov