I am a liberal and environmentalist, but I have come to the conclusion my fellow Greenies are unable to do honest cost/benefit calculations. We rarely consider the consequences of our actions. It is not just oil and gas development being opposed. For example:
Here in Alaska, there is an enormous copper deposit at the proposed Pebble mine. Developers spent hundreds of millions trying to get it permitted: test drilling, environmental studies, bribing legislators, etc. The green lobby fought it relentlessly, and the project has now been abandoned.
But….the same people who killed Pebble, want us all to be driving a EV running on wind power. EVs use lots of copper; so do wind towers. The hi-voltage charging stations to make EVs convenient, and bringing the power from all the distant wind/solar to your car: more copper. Where is it going to come from? 10 years, from greenfield to full production, longer if there are permitting problems, to develop a new mine. So, if the car companies are going to be making all the EVs they plan to, we need to be permitting those new mines today. Not happening.
I recently bought IVPAF. They are developing a big copper deposit in the DRC in Africa. They have a Chinese partner, because China understands the coming long-term copper shortage. The DRC is just about the worst place on earth to do business. No choice. That’s where the copper is, and it is getting impossible to get anything permitted in wealthy stable countries. So the capital and jobs go to Africa, not Alaska.
Someday, we all will be driving EVs running on sunlight. But there are constraints (infrastructure, capital, raw materials, technology) which will push the Green Utopia far into the future. It is all going to happen a lot slower than most people think. |
