Joel Reynolds, Western Director, Senior Attorney, Santa Monica, CA

Last month, Grover Norquist surprised a lot of people when he appeared to take up the cause of renewable energy, noting in a Politico column that copper is a necessary component of wind turbines.  In his view, therefore, we need the proposed Pebble Mine, the massive open pit copper and gold mine that foreign mining giants Anglo American, Rio Tinto, and Northern Dynasty Minerals propose to build at the headwaters of the incomparable Bristol Bay wild salmon fishery, in southwest Alaska.

If Mr. Norquist would learn a little more about the global copper industry, he might understand that, not only is the Pebble Mine unnecessary, it is precisely what we don’t need – for renewable energy or any other of copper’s countless uses today.

In fact, he should read Bill Carter’s new book “Boom, Bust, Boom: A Story About Copper, The Metal That Runs the World,” just out from Scribner.   Masquerading as the story of his personal journey from Bisbee to Flagstaff, Boom Bust Boom is a riveting expose of the bounty and devastation that is copper – one of the most ubiquitous elements in the modern world.  From copper’s myriad ...

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