Two members of the Sununu family, a powerful U.S. Republican Party dynasty, are among the directors or shareholders of Libero Copper, a proposed copper mine in the Colombian Amazon promoted as a clean energy project but harboring a significant downside for Indigenous groups. Andrés Bermúdez Liévano reports for Mongabay.
In a nutshell:
Libero Copper’s proposal to mine a protected area of the Amazon rainforest has earned the backing of a left-wing Colombian government seeking to establish its clean energy bona fides, and the trepidation of local Indigenous who fear the destruction of strip mining the rainforest.
Key quote:
“We’re in a rush for energy and battery minerals. The global economy is scrambling to scale up the supply of minerals needed for the green energy transition,” said Simon Jowitt, an economic geologist and professor at the University of Nevada Las Vegas.
Big picture:
Scenarios such as this one are playing out around the globe as the drive to electrify the world fuels fierce demand for critical minerals, copper being one of the most desirable and financially lucrative. In this case, chasing the "filthy lucre" by dealing in the raw materials for "clean energy" is a tad ironic as the Sununu family are legendary and proud climate deniers. Indigenous groups fear multiple threats from the clearcut logging and rainforest removal that will be needed to expose the prized deposit.
