S&P Global, the market research firm, expects copper demand to double by 2035 and climb thereafter, dramatically outstripping supply. Without copper, we cannot build solar panels, wind turbines, or electric cars and their battery chargers. Global decarbonization to address climate change will require enormous amounts of graphite and manganese, nickel and cobalt. Metal miners stand on the verge of a planet-spanning, multi-decade mineral boom, driven by the demands of an electrifying world. If PDAC is a weather vane for global mining, this year’s event made one thing clear: the industry thinks that the winds of commerce are at its back. This year, prime rib was back - metaphorically, but also on top of a cracker that I ate at a swank open bar. At the height of the pandemic PDAC was held online and then, last year, in hybrid form. Reuters described the 2015 PDAC as cowed, with fewer parties and empty floor space the CEO of a gold-mining company described “far less prime rib, far more chips, far more salsa.” By the end of the decade, metal prices had recovered they have now recovered again after a brief, Covid-related slump in 2020. Metal prices took a dive in the mid-2010s, with gold, silver, and copper prices all bottoming out in 20. It has been several years since the industry felt inclined to let loose. All had come to cut deals, schmooze, and see old friends. Instead, I met a transit technology salesman, a software designer, a few people who work for market makers, and a securities analyst from Australia. I spent one late night at a pub called the Walrus, and struggled for a time to find an actual mining employee. These happened every night, often sponsored by some firm or investor. In addition to the registered attendees, many more showed up for the informal, but no less important, conference behind the conference - the backroom meetings, the chats in hotel bars, the parties. They spent their days talking to company representatives, geologists, prospectors, and mineral officials from all over the world. All were looking for the right stock - an up-and-coming miner, or an obscure mineral deposit with promise. There were also investors, both large firms and individual traders. Freeport provided a café and lounge BHP sponsored admirably fast Wi-Fi. A massive Newmont banner hung over the escalator. The names of the world’s mining titans, each worth many billions of dollars, were plastered on every available surface. PDAC is where the people, companies, governments, and other institutions that constitute the global metal-mining industry commiserate in the bad times and celebrate the good. At times, the mining crowd seemed to outnumber the locals, filling the sidewalks beneath the smooth, gleaming high-rises of downtown Toronto. The geologist and I were standing at one of the more than 1,500 booths that filled the cavernous convention center, which this year welcomed nearly 24,000 attendees representing more than 130 countries. By “here,” the geologist was referring to our immediate surroundings: a commotion of excited dealmaking and unrestrained investment taking place over four days at the largest annual mining conference in the world, held in Toronto by the Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada (PDAC). Even as recently as three to four years ago, he said, lithium was not in high demand here. And right now, lithium is one of the most sought-after minerals in the world, making it “such an attractive investment,” according to Ghaderpanah, who works for a Canadian mining company with additional lithium projects in Argentina and Nevada. Those green bits, he told me, can be refined into high-grade lithium. It sat there until the invisible hand of the global market reached down into the earth, removed it, and transported it to the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, where a friendly geologist named Ramin Ghaderpanah was calling my attention to the spodumene. For millennia, this particular specimen had reposed deep below ground about 30 miles north of Lake Superior, part of a geologic formation called the Canadian Shield. Whitish gray quartz and feldspar were speckled with a pale, shimmering green silicate called spodumene. In early March, I found myself examining a small cross section of one such deposit. Heat, pressure, and fluid heavy with chemicals left deposits of metals and minerals in these ancient, crystalline substrates of the planet. Over eons, magma pooled and hardened, forming some of the oldest and most stable parts of the earth’s crust. Violent volcanic forces made and remade the landscape. At the earth’s center, a molten metal core began to coalesce, while heat and radioactive energy kept large swaths of the surface liquid. F our billion years ago, our planet was a restive place, full of geological commotion.
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