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The Green Economy Is Hungry for Copper—and People Are Stealing, Fighting, and Dying to Feed It
With the possible exception of gold, no other metal has caused as much destruction as copper. In the coming years, we’ll need more of it than ever.
As Sanderson tells it, “Friedland went on TV to defend Kabila’s advance to power, and in return got 14,000 square kilometers of land outside the copper mining town of Kolwezi.” The area sits in the heart of a phenomenally rich mineral belt stretching across the DRC and south into Zambia. Among those struck by the harshness of the place was Ernesto “Che” Guevara, who visited Chuquicamata in March 1952 and wrote in his Motorcycle Diaries about “the graveyards of the mines, containing only a small share of the immense number of people devoured by cave-ins, silica and the hellish climate of the mountain.” A recent report from the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime notes that “while two security guards may have proved a deterrent in the past,” gangs “now come in groups of 20 or 30 and are often heavily armed, with ‘spotters’ shooting at patrol vehicles.” Cell phone towers, water pipelines, and electric power stations are similarly under assault.
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