Episode Details

There are just three ways, I once heard someone say, to create real wealth:

* You make stuff

* You mine stuff

* You grow stuff

Everything else is just redistribution - pushing what is already there around.

We can argue about whether offering a service is “making stuff”. I would say, generally, it is.

I’ve always loved that as a maxim by which to view things. Pretty much all wealth creation comes under one of those three categories. You are bringing something new into the world that did not previously exist.

It’s why I have issues with forex. The foreign exchange markets are the largest and most liquid financial markets in the world. They are more than 25 times larger in daily turnover than all of the world's stock markets combined. Forex has made many people supremely rich. But is forex trading actually creating new wealth or is it another illusory consequence of fiat, and just pushing existing wealth around?

It’s a question for another time because it’s item two on that list - mining - that I want to talk about today, that loathed and despised industry, responsible for so much pollution, waste, injury, fraud and death.

Why mining is so important

We need mines. We cannot do without them. They are essential to human progress. Mines provide the raw materials that are the foundations for modern living. We would not have the world we have around us today were it not for mining: the primary means by which natural resources - metals, minerals and fossil fuels - are extracted from the earth. Human beings have been mining since before the Bronze Age and we won’t ever stop.

These natural resources can be used to make wonderful things: buildings, bridges, planes, trains and cars, electronics, and, of course, energy. Mining, and all the risks you have to take to do it, is to bring new and real wealth into the world that did not previously exist.

In the West we sit at our desks all day, in our clean, sanitised environments, and we forget that, for example, for the internet to exist, we need untold amounts of metal , be it steel, copper, silver or some rare earth metal neither you nor I know the name of.

With our cosseted western existence, we have in many ways lost touch with the world around us: the land, the environment, the animals and plants we eat. We have forgotten just how the things around us came to be. There was a time when you would build up a relationship with an animal before you ate it. I’m looking around me at my office and every single item - from my desk to my computer to my books to the house I’m in - would not exist without mining.

If Net Zero is to be realised (spoiler alert: it won’t be), and we are going to transition from fossil fuel to electricity, we are going to need to mine unprecedented amounts of copper and lithium (which in itself is going to entail extraordinary amounts of fossil fuel consumption).

But mining has a huge environmental impact. Though it’s hard to find a human activity that doesn’t have an environmental impact, mining is exceptional. Together with certain types of fishing, it’s probably the most environmentally damaging of all industries. That’s why there are so many rules and regulations in place. They’re there to attempt to minimise damage.

Mining will never have zero impact. There is a trade-off between the impact of the mine, the wealth it creates and the benefits it brings.

But it is because of the potential mining has to cause harm, to the environment, to local communities, to workers, that so many of us feel ambivalent about it, if not downright opposed.

The fellowship of mining

There are common characteristics to miners, visible throughout history and in all the myth and legend that surrounds them: brave, strong, hard working, fiercely proud, stoic, with incredible camaraderie amongst them - probably because of the