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Beaty, McEwen, O’Toole urge mining firms to lead climate crisis fight LONDON SYMPOSIUM
| ‘Enviro stewardship means good economics’
BY COLIN MCCLELLAND
S
ustainable mining must be the new normal to boost earnings and convince a skeptical public about the industry’s importance to combat global warming as the world enters a metals trade war, Ross Beaty, Rob McEwen and former Conservative Party leader Erin O’Toole say. Mining luminaries Beaty and McEwen stressed the importance of tapping renewable energy, eliminating tailings dams and slashing water use as proposed at Equinox Gold’s (TSX: EQX: NYSE-AM: EQX) Greenstone mine in Ontario and McEwen Mining’s (TSX: MUX; NYSE: MUX) Los Azules copper project in Argentina. They spoke on a green metals panel at The Northern Miner’s International Metals Symposium in London Dec. 1-2. “At the end of the day, it affects your bottom line,” said Beaty, chair of $3.8-billion market cap Equinox Gold. “If you look after the environment, if you look after your employees, if you look after your communities, you can mine more cheaply and more effectively with fewer disruptions. It’s just simple good business.”
Above: Former Conservative Party leader Erin O’Toole makes a point, with Rob McEwen. Left: Ross Beaty, Nicole Schwab, Rob McEwen, Erin O’Toole and moderator Elena Mayer. THE NORTHERN MINER
Fellow panelist Nicole Schwab of the World Economic Forum echoed the sentiment with a forecast that critical mineral demand may rise four to six times by 2040 while 16% of mines with those minerals are in water-strained areas and only 5% of miners have set biodiversity targets. Half the world’s GDP is at risk from the loss of
“At the end of the day, it affects your bottom line... It’s just simple good business.” ROSS BEATY, EQUINOX GOLD
nature because industries depend so much on it, she said.
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‘Unlivable planet’ “We are suffering from CO2 tunnel vision,” Schwab said of a fixation on just cutting emissions instead of also saving flora and fauna. “If we look just at the energy transition, we’re missing the point, because we may achieve those targets, but we are going to be on an unlivable planet.” Billions or trillions more dollars are poised to fuel the mining industry as governments pivot to fight climate change. But companies face a slew of challenges after decades of mine accidents and environmental degradation have slammed the sector’s public image. Some miners complain they can’t afford to be sustainable while critical minerals leader China pollutes seemingly unpunished. And now United States president-elect Donald Trump threatens a global trade
war that could cut metal prices and snarl supply chains. Yet, Canadian miners could benefit from sustainable operations creating their own added value, said O’Toole, a trade lawyer who’s now president of the North American unit of Paris-based business intelligence firm ADIT. The global rules-based liberalized trade order is morphing into a new stage of interventionist tariffs and sanctions, he said. “Trade is being managed in a range of ways through tariffs, depending on what president-elect Trump tweets on a certain day,” O’Toole said. “But also, you’re going to be seeing managed trade through carbon emissions.” BRICS challenge The BRICS nations, led by the namesake Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, but also including Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia and the United Arab Emirates, are considering their own currency to challenge the U.S. dollar. They’re also trying to sidestep the G7’s rising environmental, social and governance (ESG) standards for mining. “There has to be some sort of policy direction to curtail that and it’s going to be sanctions,” O’Toole said. “It’s going to be carbon, border adjustment tariffs, to recognize that if another country is not pricing in carbon or not reducing emissions, we’re not going to let their products circumvent our own.” Still, Canadian miners often say
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it’s pointless to change ways of generating electricity when they’re a drop in the pollution bucket compared to some other nations, Beaty said. London 30 > PM44082538