Peter Zeihan

it's like you want to expand your grid you need copper you want to do more industry you need copper you want to do anything with green tech you need copper you need a lot of it the united states wants to double the size of its industrial plant the united states in order to do that needs to increase its grid by half that means we need to consume about 12 times as much copper for the next 30 years as we have for the last 30 why does that come from where is most of the copper in the world

The only country in the world that has what you would consider maybe surge capacity to increase output on anything less than a five-year timeframe is Chile, the out-of-town, the desert.

Number two is the United States.

Number three is Canada.

Number four is Mexico.

That's great, but that's the ore.

Then you got to turn it into copper metal.

That's China and India.

Oh, fuck.

Well, I mean, we could.

We've chosen not to.

And, you know, it's not a new technology.

This dates back to like the early 1800s.

You basically...

Heat it up.

You boil off the sulfur.

You heat it up some more.

You purify it into metal, and then you turn it into other things.

There's nothing to stop us from doing that except for the cost, the footprint, the pollution.

These are real things.