A Good Prospect
F our billion years ago, our planet was a restive place, full of geological commotion.
十亿年前，我们的星球是一个动荡不安的地方，充满了地质骚动。
At the earth’s center, a molten metal core began to coalesce, while heat and radioactive energy kept large swaths of the surface liquid.
在地球中心，熔融金属核心开始聚结，而热量和放射性能量则使大片地表保持液态。
Violent volcanic forces made and remade the landscape.
猛烈的火山力量不断塑造着这里的景观。
Over eons, magma pooled and hardened, forming some of the oldest and most stable parts of the earth’s crust.
经过亿万年的时间，岩浆聚集并硬化，形成了地壳中一些最古老、最稳定的部分。
Heat, pressure, and fluid heavy with chemicals left deposits of metals and minerals in these ancient, crystalline substrates of the planet.
热量、压力和富含化学物质的流体在地球这些古老的晶体基质中留下了金属和矿物的沉积物。
In early March, I found myself examining a small cross section of one such deposit.
三月初，我发现自己正在检查此类矿床的一小部分横截面。
Whitish gray quartz and feldspar were speckled with a pale, shimmering green silicate called spodumene.
白灰色石英和长石上散布着一种浅色、闪闪发光的绿色硅酸盐，称为锂辉石。
For millennia, this particular specimen had reposed deep below ground about 30 miles north of Lake Superior, part of a geologic formation called the Canadian Shield.
几千年来，这个特殊的标本一直埋藏在苏必利尔湖以北约 30 英里的地下深处，是加拿大地盾地质构造的一部分。
It sat there until the invisible hand of the global market reached down into the earth, removed it, and transported it to the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, where a friendly geologist named Ramin Ghaderpanah was calling my attention to the spodumene.
它一直坐在那里，直到全球市场的无形之手伸入地球，将其移走，并将其运送到多伦多都会会议中心，在那里一位名叫拉明·加德帕纳（Ramin Ghaderpanah）的友好地质学家正在提醒我注意锂辉石。
Those green bits, he told me, can be refined into high-grade lithium.
他告诉我，这些绿色碎片可以提炼成高级锂。
And right now, lithium is one of the most sought-after minerals in the world, making it “such an attractive investment,” according to Ghaderpanah, who works for a Canadian mining company with additional lithium projects in Argentina and Nevada.
目前，锂是世界上最受欢迎的矿物之一，这使其成为“一项极具吸引力的投资”，加德帕纳在一家加拿大矿业公司工作，该公司在阿根廷和内华达州还有其他锂项目。
Even as recently as three to four years ago, he said, lithium was not in high demand here.
他说，即使是在三四年前，这里对锂的需求也并不高。
By “here,” the geologist was referring to our immediate surroundings: a commotion of excited dealmaking and unrestrained investment taking place over four days at the largest annual mining conference in the world, held in Toronto by the Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada (PDAC).
这位地质学家所说的“这里”指的是我们周围的环境：在加拿大探矿者与开发商协会 (PDAC) 在多伦多举办的世界上最大的年度采矿会议上，为期四天的交易和不受限制的投资骚动不断。
The geologist and I were standing at one of the more than 1,500 booths that filled the cavernous convention center, which this year welcomed nearly 24,000 attendees representing more than 130 countries.
我和地质学家站在这个巨大的会议中心的 1,500 多个展位之一，今年该会议中心迎来了来自 130 多个国家的近 24,000 名与会者。
At times, the mining crowd seemed to outnumber the locals, filling the sidewalks beneath the smooth, gleaming high-rises of downtown Toronto.
有时，采矿人群的数量似乎超过了当地人，挤满了多伦多市中心光滑、闪闪发光的高楼大厦下的人行道。
PDAC is where the people, companies, governments, and other institutions that constitute the global metal-mining industry commiserate in the bad times and celebrate the good.
PDAC 是构成全球金属采矿业的个人、公司、政府和其他机构在困难时期表示同情并庆祝美好时光的地方。
The names of the world’s mining titans, each worth many billions of dollars, were plastered on every available surface.
每个价值数十亿美元的世界矿业巨头的名字都贴在每一个可用的表面上。
A massive Newmont banner hung over the escalator.
自动扶梯上方悬挂着巨大的纽蒙特横幅。
Freeport provided a café and lounge; BHP sponsored admirably fast Wi-Fi.
自由港设有咖啡馆和休息室；必和必拓赞助了速度极快的 Wi-Fi。
There were also investors, both large firms and individual traders.
还有投资者，包括大公司和个人交易者。
All were looking for the right stock — an up-and-coming miner, or an obscure mineral deposit with promise.
所有人都在寻找合适的股票——一个崭露头角的矿工，或者一个默默无闻、前景光明的矿藏。
They spent their days talking to company representatives, geologists, prospectors, and mineral officials from all over the world.
他们整天与来自世界各地的公司代表、地质学家、探矿者和矿产官员交谈。
In addition to the registered attendees, many more showed up for the informal, but no less important, conference behind the conference — the backroom meetings, the chats in hotel bars, the parties.
除了注册的与会者之外，还有更多人参加了会议背后的非正式但同样重要的会议——幕后会议、酒店酒吧的聊天、聚会。
Perhaps especially the parties.
也许尤其是派对。
These happened every night, often sponsored by some firm or investor.
这些活动每天晚上都会发生，通常是由一些公司或投资者赞助的。
I spent one late night at a pub called the Walrus, and struggled for a time to find an actual mining employee.
一个深夜，我在一家名为“海象”的酒吧度过了一个深夜，并努力寻找一名真正的采矿员工。
Instead, I met a transit technology salesman, a software designer, a few people who work for market makers, and a securities analyst from Australia.
相反，我遇到了一位交通技术推销员、一位软件设计师、一些为做市商工作的人，以及一位来自澳大利亚的证券分析师。
All had come to cut deals, schmooze, and see old friends.
大家都是来谈生意、闲聊、看望老朋友的。
It has been several years since the industry felt inclined to let loose.
该行业已经有好几年没有想要放松了。
Metal prices took a dive in the mid-2010s, with gold, silver, and copper prices all bottoming out in 2014 and 2015.
金属价格在 2010 年代中期大幅下跌，黄金、白银和铜的价格均在 2014 年和 2015 年触底。
Mass layoffs ensued.
大规模裁员随之而来。
Reuters described the 2015 PDAC as cowed, with fewer parties and empty floor space; the CEO of a gold-mining company described “far less prime rib, far more chips, far more salsa.” By the end of the decade, metal prices had recovered; they have now recovered again after a brief, Covid-related slump in 2020.
路透社称 2015 年 PDAC 令人畏惧，派对较少，场地空旷；一家金矿公司的首席执行官形容“上等肋骨少得多，薯片多得多，莎莎酱多得多”。到本世纪末，金属价格已经回升。在经历了 2020 年因新冠肺炎疫情而出现的短暂低迷之后，他们现在已经再次复苏。
At the height of the pandemic PDAC was held online and then, last year, in hybrid form.
在疫情最严重的时候，PDAC 是在网上举行的，然后在去年以混合形式举行。
This year, prime rib was back — metaphorically, but also on top of a cracker that I ate at a swank open bar.
今年，上等肋骨又回来了——打个比方，而且还放在我在一家豪华开放酒吧吃的饼干上。
If PDAC is a weather vane for global mining, this year’s event made one thing clear: the industry thinks that the winds of commerce are at its back.
如果说 PDAC 是全球矿业的风向标，那么今年的活动清楚地表明了一件事：该行业认为商业之风正在推动其发展。
Metal miners stand on the verge of a planet-spanning, multi-decade mineral boom, driven by the demands of an electrifying world.
在电气化世界的需求推动下，金属矿商正处于跨越全球数十年的矿产繁荣的边缘。
Global decarbonization to address climate change will require enormous amounts of graphite and manganese, nickel and cobalt.
应对气候变化的全球脱碳将需要大量的石墨、锰、镍和钴。
Above all, it will require copper.
最重要的是，它需要铜。
Without copper, we cannot build solar panels, wind turbines, or electric cars and their battery chargers.
没有铜，我们就无法制造太阳能电池板、风力涡轮机或电动汽车及其电池充电器。
S&P Global, the market research firm, expects copper demand to double by 2035 and climb thereafter, dramatically outstripping supply.
市场研究公司标准普尔全球预计，到 2035 年，铜需求将翻一番，并在此后攀升，大幅超过供应。
“In the 21st century, copper scarcity may emerge as a key destabilizing threat to international security,” its 2022 report found.
其 2022 年报告发现，“21 世纪，铜短缺可能成为国际安全的主要不稳定威胁”。
Lithium is also expected to win big.
锂也有望大获成功。
A world that does not rely on fossil fuel combustion will need rechargeable battery technology at an unprecedented scale, in everything from the cars we drive to grid-scale energy storage infrastructure, with enough capacity to power a city when the sun sets and everyone turns on their lights.
一个不依赖化石燃料燃烧的世界将需要前所未有规模的可充电电池技术，从我们驾驶的汽车到电网规模的能源存储基础设施，都有足够的容量在太阳落山和每个人都打开灯时为城市供电。
None of this will be possible without lithium.
如果没有锂，这一切都不可能实现。
The Biden White House estimates that demand for lithium and other electric vehicle (E.V.) battery minerals could swell by 4,000 percent in the coming decades.
拜登白宫估计，未来几十年对锂和其他电动汽车 (E.V.) 电池矿物的需求可能会增长 4,000%。
And, as with copper, there’s evidence that global lithium supply will soon be insufficient — without a production boom, we’ll have only half the lithium and cobalt we need to hit 2030 climate goals, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
而且，与铜一样，有证据表明全球锂供应很快就会不足——根据国际能源署 (IEA) 的数据，如果没有生产繁荣，我们的锂和钴产量将只有实现 2030 年气候目标所需的一半。
A May report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace laid out still more dire projections: in 2030, lithium, cobalt, and graphite demand may outpace production for the U.S. and its allies tenfold, thirtyfold, and eightyfold, respectively.
卡内基国际和平基金会 5 月份的一份报告提出了更可怕的预测：到 2030 年，美国及其盟国的锂、钴和石墨需求可能分别超过产量的十倍、三十倍和八十倍。
Expected shortages and bottomless demand have automakers scrambling to secure their supply chains.
预期的短缺和无底的需求让汽车制造商争先恐后地确保其供应链的安全。
In January, General Motors announced a $650 million investment in Lithium Americas, which is developing what will likely be the U.S.’s largest lithium mine.
一月份，通用汽车宣布向 Lithium Americas 投资 6.5 亿美元，该公司正在开发可能成为美国最大的锂矿。
Since then, G.M.
从那时起，G.M.
has also invested in a lithium-extraction startup and announced a fourth planned battery manufacturing plant in the U.S. And in the past year, mining giant Rio Tinto and Chinese battery manufacturer CATL both signed deals with Ford.
还投资了一家锂提取初创公司，并宣布计划在美国建立第四家电池制造厂。去年，矿业巨头力拓和中国电池制造商宁德时代都与福特签署了协议。
To call the mood at PDAC optimistic would be an understatement.
称 PDAC 的情绪为乐观还算轻描淡写。
The conference was awash with talk of new mines and big profits.
会议上充满了关于新矿和巨额利润的讨论。
Amid the hubbub, I caught up with John Thompson, a geoscientist and longtime mining insider who seemed to know everyone.
在喧嚣声中，我遇到了约翰·汤普森（John Thompson），他是一位地球科学家，也是一位长期的矿业内部人士，他似乎认识所有人。
Thompson spoke softly, in a British accent, and projected an ironic detachment from the surrounding commotion, born of many years in the industry.
汤普森说话轻声细语，带有英国口音，并表现出一种讽刺性的超然态度，与周围的喧嚣无关，这是多年来在该行业产生的。
“The buzz,” he said, “is related to the perceived importance of critical metals and minerals.
“这种嗡嗡声，”他说，“与关键金属和矿物的重要性有关。
You can debate lots of issues around that, but the industry is just feeling ecstatic.
你可以围绕这个问题争论很多问题，但整个行业却感到欣喜若狂。
Everybody loves us, and that hasn’t traditionally been the case.”
每个人都爱我们，但传统上情况并非如此。”
Mining is getting a makeover.
采矿业正在发生翻天覆地的变化。
To build a mine, a company needs legal permits, and in the old days, perhaps those were enough.
要建造矿山，公司需要法律许可，而在过去，也许这些就足够了。
Today, though, the industry and its investors increasingly believe that in order to be successful — and maximize profits — a company also needs what the industry calls a “social license to operate,” or moral permission to reap the benefits of tearing up the earth to extract minerals.
然而如今，该行业及其投资者越来越相信，为了获得成功并实现利润最大化，一家公司还需要获得该行业所称的“社会经营许可”，即道德许可，以获取从地球上开采矿物所带来的好处。
Social license and profit go hand in hand.
社会许可和利润齐头并进。
With that in mind, companies are trying to reinvent themselves as part of the solution to the climate crisis, allies to the environmentally minded with carbon-neutral targets for their global operations.
考虑到这一点，企业正在努力重塑自身，作为气候危机解决方案的一部分，与具有环保意识的企业结盟，为其全球运营制定碳中和目标。
And that’s not all: this year’s PDAC also displayed a heightened interest in the concerns of Indigenous nations and a focus on increasing the number of women in the industry.
这还不是全部：今年的 PDAC 还表现出对原住民问题的高度关注，并注重增加该行业的女性人数。
Many panels and speeches began with land acknowledgements.
许多小组讨论和演讲都以土地致谢开始。
Sessions on offer included “Why Indigenous women in mining is a golden opportunity,” “The amazing race to decarbonize,” and “ Operationalizing the ‘S’ in ESG: Does it matter to investors?
提供的会议包括“为什么采矿业的土著女性是一个黄金机会”、“脱碳的惊人竞赛”和“实施 ESG 中的‘S’：这对投资者重要吗？
” (ESG stands for environmental, social, and governance, a shorthand for a supposedly more socially conscious form of investment.) Unequivocally, the answer was yes.
（ESG 代表环境、社会和治理，是一种据称更具社会意识的投资形式的简写。）毫无疑问，答案是肯定的。
From the opening keynote address, it was clear that the climate crisis itself has become a means for mining interests to obtain social license, providing a ready justification for the industry’s activities.
从开幕式的主旨演讲中可以明显看出，气候危机本身已成为采矿业利益获得社会许可的一种手段，为该行业的活动提供了现成的理由。
Following a land acknowledgement, Ken Hoffman, head of the battery materials team at McKinsey, took the podium in front of a large room packed with hundreds of people.
在获得土地认可后，麦肯锡电池材料团队负责人肯·霍夫曼在一个挤满了数百人的大房间前走上讲台。
Hoffman summarized the state of global supply, demand, and pricing trends for various key metals.
霍夫曼总结了各种主要金属的全球供需状况和价格趋势。
He discussed the significant material needs of electric vehicles and several renewable energy technologies.
他讨论了电动汽车和几种可再生能源技术的重要物质需求。
An electric car requires six times the amount of mineral resources as a gas-powered car, according to the IEA; an onshore wind turbine outstrips a natural gas-fired power plant in mineral inputs by a factor of nine.
根据国际能源署的数据，电动汽车需要的矿产资源量是汽油动力汽车的六倍；陆上风力涡轮机的矿物投入量是天然气发电厂的九倍。
He encouraged the industry to position itself to deliver ethically sourced, low-carbon metals and minerals to meet specifications laid out by regulators in the U.S. and E.U., and discussed various advances in E.V.
他鼓励该行业定位自己，提供符合道德来源的低碳金属和矿物，以满足美国和欧盟监管机构制定的规范，并讨论了电动汽车领域的各种进展。
technology.
技术。
The upshot of each of these topics, though, was the same.
不过，每个主题的结果都是相同的。
Decarbonizing the modern world is going to make the mining world a lot of money — by Hoffman’s estimate, on the order of fifteen to twenty trillion dollars.
现代世界的脱碳将使采矿业赚到很多钱——根据霍夫曼的估计，约为十五到二十万亿美元。
At one point, Hoffman seemed to address a nameless, climate-conscious consumer, the sort of person who wants their personal choices to reflect their desire to save the planet — a desire that, in all likelihood, will enrich the people in that room.
有一次，霍夫曼似乎在向一位无名的、具有气候意识的消费者讲话，这类人希望自己的个人选择能够反映他们拯救地球的愿望——这种愿望很可能会让在场的人变得富裕。
T he phrase “energy transition” is a common shorthand for the elimination of fossil fuels.
“能源转型”一词是消除化石燃料的常见简写。
But, as the economic historian Adam Tooze argued in March, its suggestion of a smooth shift from one mode to another fails to adequately capture the radical nature of the challenge ahead — the total transformation of global energy production required to address the climate crisis.
但是，正如经济历史学家亚当·图兹（Adam Tooze）在三月份指出的那样，它关于从一种模式平稳转向另一种模式的建议未能充分抓住未来挑战的根本性质——应对气候危机所需的全球能源生产的全面转型。
Coal, gas, and oil still account for more than 60 percent of humanity’s total electricity generation.
煤炭、天然气和石油仍占人类总发电量的 60% 以上。
These need to be phased out immediately; extant and planned fossil fuel projects are almost certain to push the globe past two degrees Celsius of warming.
这些需要立即逐步淘汰；现有和计划中的化石燃料项目几乎肯定会使全球变暖超过两摄氏度。
And new energy sources will need to meet surging global electricity demand, which is expected to double, at minimum, in the coming decades.
新能源将需要满足不断增长的全球电力需求，预计未来几十年至少将翻一番。
“The wholesale displacement of fossil fuels across global electricity generation, with overall capacity expanded to twice its current size, in the space of a single generation, will be a truly staggering undertaking,” Tooze writes.
图兹写道：“在一代人的时间内，全球发电总量将大规模取代化石燃料，总容量将扩大到目前的两倍，这将是一项真正令人震惊的事业。”
This monumental economic transformation will require a lot — and I mean a lot — of minerals and metals.
这一巨大的经济转型将需要大量——我的意思是大量——矿物和金属。
As a result, Western governments and corporations are scrambling to secure their mineral supply, keen to enact the necessary changes while also meeting the quality-of-life expectations of first-world consumers.
因此，西方政府和企业正在争先恐后地确保其矿产供应，热衷于实施必要的变革，同时满足第一世界消费者的生活质量期望。
In the U.S., the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) provides half a trillion dollars for clean-energy and climate policies, which includes tax breaks and incentives for electric cars and battery-metal supply chains.
在美国，《通货膨胀削减法案》(IRA) 为清洁能源和气候政策提供了 5 万亿美元，其中包括对电动汽车和电池金属供应链的税收减免和激励措施。
PDAC attendees approve, of course.
PDAC 与会者当然认可。
As Hoffman, the McKinsey analyst, said, the IRA changed “everything.” But it also led to some jokes poking fun at the U.S. as a great consumer of metals with a longstanding aversion to doing the mining or refining itself.
正如麦肯锡分析师霍夫曼所说，爱尔兰共和军改变了“一切”。但这也引发了一些笑话，取笑美国作为金属消费大国，长期以来不愿自行开采或精炼。
“In the U.S. they don’t want to mine,” Hoffman told the amused crowd, “but they want to buy from sources deemed acceptable to U.S. regulators.
“在美国，他们不想开采，”霍夫曼对有趣的人群说，“但他们想从美国监管机构认为可以接受的来源购买。
Canada, we love you.”
加拿大，我们爱你。”
All that cash, however, cannot hide the plain fact that the U.S. and other Western governments no longer call all the shots.
然而，所有这些现金都无法掩盖一个明显的事实，即美国和其他西方政府不再发号施令。
To obtain battery metals, countries are forming and breaking partnerships, striking deals and making enemies, in ways that mirror the shifting alliances of our increasingly multipolar world.
为了获得电池金属，各国正在建立和打破伙伴关系、达成交易和树敌，其方式反映了我们日益多极化的世界不断变化的联盟。
In the Anglophone sphere, governments have closed ranks against China, which refines more than half of the world’s lithium and controls some 85 percent of the processing capacity for rare-earth metals.
在英语国家，各国政府已与中国紧密合作，中国精炼了全球一半以上的锂，并控制着约 85% 的稀土金属加工能力。
In recent decades, this arrangement seemed to satisfy the scions of global mining, whose headquarters are in the industrial core: Canada, the U.K., Australia, Switzerland.
近几十年来，这种安排似乎满足了全球矿业的后裔，他们的总部位于工业核心：加拿大、英国、澳大利亚、瑞士。
Minerals are often extracted in the Global South, processed in China, and turned into capital back home on a few key stock exchanges.
矿物通常在南半球国家开采，在中国加工，然后在国内的几个主要证券交易所转化为资本。
(Australia, London, and Toronto host the primary metal markets.
（澳大利亚、伦敦和多伦多是主要金属市场的所在地。
PDAC’s location is no accident; most large mining firms are either based in Canada or have large offices there.)
PDAC 的选址绝非偶然。大多数大型矿业公司要么总部设在加拿大，要么在那里设有大型办事处。）
Chafing against its status as a mere stop on the supply chain, China has become a producer and consumer of metals and rare-earth minerals at levels rivaling those of the West.
中国因其作为供应链中的一站的地位而感到恼火，已成为金属和稀土矿物的生产国和消费国，其水平可与西方相媲美。
Several Chinese companies challenge the Western heavyweights in market capitalization, with huge operations in places like Tibet, Mongolia, and sub-Saharan Africa.
几家中国公司在市值方面向西方重量级企业发起挑战，在西藏、蒙古和撒哈拉以南非洲等地拥有庞大的业务。
In February, Nigeria’s government announced a large lithium deal with one of the major Chinese miners, months after rejecting a bid from Tesla.
今年二月，尼日利亚政府在拒绝特斯拉的报价几个月后，宣布与中国一家主要矿商达成一项大型锂矿交易。
Fearing competition from the new superpower, Canada forced three Chinese companies to divest from lithium holdings last November.
由于担心来自新超级大国的竞争，加拿大去年11月迫使三家中国公司撤资锂资产。
A few months later, Australia blocked an attempt by a Chinese firm to buy a greater share in a mining company.
几个月后，澳大利亚阻止了一家中国公司购买一家矿业公司更多股份的尝试。
Both governments cited national security concerns.
两国政府都提到了国家安全问题。
Now that Western governments’ influence is on the wane, countries rich in deposits of battery minerals across the Global South have discovered that they have leverage.
现在，西方政府的影响力正在减弱，南半球电池矿藏丰富的国家发现它们拥有影响力。
More than half of the world’s lithium reserves are concentrated in South America’s “Lithium Triangle” — Chile, Bolivia, and Argentina — and in the past few years, a wave of left-wing and socialist governments have come to power on the continent.
全球一半以上的锂储量集中在南美洲的“锂三角”——智利、玻利维亚和阿根廷——过去几年，一波左翼和社会主义政府在非洲大陆上台。
This is not a coincidence.
这并非巧合。
Most of the winning candidates promised some combination of a crackdown on mining pollution and increased respect for the rights and wishes of Indigenous communities, who have historically been forced to bear the costs of mineral extraction.
大多数获胜候选人承诺将打击采矿污染和加强对原住民社区权利和意愿的尊重相结合，这些原住民社区历来被迫承担矿产开采成本。
For many of these countries, mineral wealth has meant impoverishment for the people who live on the richest land.
对于其中许多国家来说，矿产财富意味着生活在最富裕土地上的人们的贫困。
Former Peruvian President Pedro Castillo and President Gabriel Boric of Chile were elected after campaigning on redistributing mining profits and stronger mining regulations.
秘鲁前总统佩德罗·卡斯蒂略和智利总统加布里埃尔·博里奇在倡导重新分配采矿利润和加强采矿监管后当选。
In February, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador signed a decree that placed all the country’s lithium under state control.
今年二月，墨西哥总统安德烈斯·曼努埃尔·洛佩斯·奥夫拉多尔签署了一项法令，将该国所有锂矿置于国家控制之下。
And Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s furthest-left president in 75 years, has seized the assets of two gold companies, proposed huge taxes on the mining sector, and vowed to form a state-owned mining company.
哥伦比亚75年来最左派总统古斯塔沃·佩特罗(Gustavo Petro)没收了两家黄金公司的资产，提议对采矿业征收巨额税，并誓言要组建一家国有矿业公司。
In April, The New Republic reported on attempts to undermine Petro, backed by right-wing military and business elites.
4 月，《新共和》报道了在右翼军事和商业精英支持下试图破坏 Petro 的企图。
Naturally, this trend has left companies and investors anxious for friendlier sites to mine.
自然，这种趋势让公司和投资者渴望找到更友好的挖矿地点。
In February, just before PDAC, a prominent mining podcast warned about escalating “jurisdiction risk,” noting that investors “hear all sorts of stories about South America, you know with Peru and protests, and all this sort of stuff.” This gave the episode’s guest, Argentina Lithium & Energy CEO Nikolaos Cacos, a chance to tout the stability and pro-mining governance in Argentina, where his company has several large lithium claims (which give a company the right to explore for minerals on a specific parcel of land).
今年 2 月，就在 PDAC 召开之前，一个著名的矿业播客警告称，“管辖权风险”不断升级，并指出投资者“听到了有关南美洲的各种故事，你知道秘鲁和抗议活动，以及所有类似的事情。”这让本集的嘉宾、阿根廷锂与能源公司首席执行官尼古拉斯·卡科斯（Nikolaos Cacos）有机会宣扬阿根廷的稳定性和支持采矿业的治理，他的公司在阿根廷拥有几处大型锂矿权（这赋予公司在特定土地上勘探矿产的权利）。
“There’s elections coming up,” he said, “and there’s projections for a pro-business government to win.” Other global players, it seems, are willing to submit to the new demands of South American governments.
“选举即将到来，”他说，“预计亲商政府将会获胜。”其他全球参与者似乎愿意屈服于南美国家政府的新要求。
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz recently visited Chile, hoping to divert some of its lithium, which predominantly goes to China, to his country’s automakers.
德国总理奥拉夫·肖尔茨最近访问了智利，希望将主要销往中国的部分锂转移给该国的汽车制造商。
According to Bloomberg , Scholz pledged to invest in Chilean processing of raw materials, rather than exporting them.
据彭博社报道，肖尔茨承诺投资智利原材料加工，而不是出口。
Demands for greater domestic rewards from mineral exploitation can be heard far beyond South America.
在南美洲以外的地方也能听到要求从矿产开采中获得更多国内回报的呼声。
Indonesia banned nickel exports, which has helped promote a fast-growing battery industry, and is trying to organize an OPEC-like consortium for metal processing.
印度尼西亚禁止镍出口，这有助于促进电池行业的快速增长，并正在尝试组织一个类似欧佩克的金属加工财团。
In January, the Philippines proposed a ten percent nickel ore export tax, prompting outcry from private-sector firms, which argued that the move would “kill” the industry, Reuters reported .
据路透社报道，今年 1 月，菲律宾提议征收 10% 的镍矿石出口税，引发了私营企业的强烈抗议，他们认为此举将“扼杀”该行业。
And a government watchdog from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, home to large copper and cobalt deposits, which state-run Chinese companies have mined for over a decade, recently took the superpower to task for delivering less than a third of a promised three billion dollars for infrastructure improvements.
刚果民主共和国拥有大量铜矿和钴矿，中国国有企业十多年来一直在开采这些矿藏，该国政府监管机构最近对这个超级大国提出了责难，因为该国承诺的 30 亿美元用于基础设施改善的资金还不到三分之一。
It seems China, wary of losing those deposits, will play ball.
中国似乎担心失去这些存款，因此会配合。
According to Reuters, the two are negotiating an additional seventeen billion dollars and a larger stake for the DRC’s state-run mining company.
据路透社报道，两人正在就追加 170 亿美元以及收购刚果国营矿业公司的更多股份进行谈判。
Political power and economics have always been entwined, free trade and international markets backstopped by military might and geopolitical muscle.
政治权力和经济始终交织在一起，自由贸易和国际市场得到军事力量和地缘政治力量的支持。
Still, it seems that, in the frantic race for limited battery-metal supplies, governments are unwilling to leave things to the market, wielding their power in increasingly explicit ways.
尽管如此，在争夺有限的电池金属供应的疯狂竞争中，各国政府似乎不愿意将事情交给市场，以越来越明确的方式行使权力。
All the rapid shifts in the global mining industry’s geography introduced a current of doubt into PDAC’s party atmosphere.
全球采矿业地理分布的迅速变化给 PDAC 的聚会气氛带来了一股怀疑的情绪。
The green metals boom is indeed here.
绿色金属热潮确实已经到来。
Beyond that, uncertainty abounds.
除此之外，不确定性还比比皆是。
T he convention floor at PDAC was overwhelming.
PDAC 的会议厅座无虚席。
There was a booth for a diamond mine in Angola; a booth for Greenland’s mining delegation; another for a geochemistry consulting firm.
安哥拉钻石矿有一个展位；格陵兰矿业代表团的展位；另一个是地球化学咨询公司的。
There were advertisements for copper mines from Arizona and the Xanadu copper-and-gold project in Mongolia.
其中有来自亚利桑那州铜矿和蒙古 Xanadu 铜金项目的广告。
The national mining company of Chad offered pamphlets.
乍得国家矿业公司提供了小册子。
“The country is virgin from an industrial point of view,” they read, “an open market with little competition.” There were smiles and handshakes.
他们写道：“从工业角度来看，这个国家还是处女地，是一个几乎没有竞争的开放市场。”有人微笑，有人握手。
Everyone was selling hope and excitement and the promise of profit.
每个人都在兜售希望、兴奋和利润的承诺。
One booth displayed bars of gold bullion.
一个摊位上陈列着金条。
Some exhibits were clean and modern; others were cluttered with technical maps and dense data that required an advanced degree in geology to decipher.
有些展品干净而现代；有些展品干净而现代。其他的则堆满了技术地图和密集的数据，需要高级地质学学位才能解读。
I passed the Core Shack and the Investors Exchange and found my way to the last row of booths, set against the back wall of the gigantic building.
我经过了核心小屋和投资者交易所，找到了最后一排摊位，靠着这座巨大建筑的后墙。
This is where PDAC puts the prospectors, the treasure hunters who scour maps and mineral reports for deposits of ore that the major companies have passed over.
这就是 PDAC 安排探矿者和寻宝者的地方，他们在地图和矿产报告中寻找大公司忽略的矿藏。
They stake a claim, maybe drill a few exploratory core samples, and bring their finds to the conference, hoping that a small mining or exploration company will throw some capital their way.
他们提出主张，也许会钻取一些勘探岩心样本，并将他们的发现带到会议上，希望一家小型采矿或勘探公司能够投入一些资金。
It’s “about the riskiest thing you can do for money,” an American prospector once told me.
一位美国探矿者曾经告诉我，这是“为了钱可以做的最危险的事情”。
I stopped by one booth, an outfit from the island of Newfoundland, and met Neal Blackmore, who was glad to talk me through the travails of prospecting.
我在一个来自纽芬兰岛的摊位前停下来，遇到了尼尔·布莱克莫尔（Neal Blackmore），他很高兴向我讲述了探矿的艰辛。
“We’re pretty low on the food chain,” he told me.
“我们在食物链中处于相当低的位置，”他告诉我。
In some Canadian provinces, staking a mining claim still requires actually driving wooden posts into the ground.
在加拿大的一些省份，要取得采矿权，仍然需要将木柱打入地下。
With his tangled beard and long hair, a rumpled blazer worn over a graphic t-shirt, Blackmore seemed out of place at the buttoned-up corporate conference.
布莱克莫尔的胡须和长发纠结在一起，衣服上穿着一件皱巴巴的西装外套，外面套着一件图案T恤，布莱克莫尔在这个保守的公司会议上显得格格不入。
It was easy to imagine him bushwhacking through the woods and pounding stakes.
很容易想象他在树林中穿行，敲打木桩。
Still, his look seemed to serve him well at PDAC.
尽管如此，他的外表似乎对 PDAC 很有利。
While we were talking, two capital markets investors and the CEO of an exploration company stopped by.
当我们谈话时，两位资本市场投资者和一家勘探公司的首席执行官过来了。
All were working with him on potential mines, building on deals hammered out, in part, at previous PDACs.
所有这些人都在与他合作开发潜在的矿山，部分是在之前的 PDAC 上敲定的交易的基础上进行的。
He made dinner plans with the men and discussed the group’s mining camp in Newfoundland, where the main danger comes in the form of trigger-happy big-game hunters from America.
他与这些人一起制定了晚餐计划，并讨论了该组织在纽芬兰的采矿营地，那里的主要危险来自来自美国的好战的大型狩猎者。
Blackmore’s table displayed a few copper-gold sulfide samples, as well as papers describing gold and silver deposits — and a single lithium claim, which a woman scooped up while we were talking.
布莱克莫尔的桌子上展示了一些铜金硫化物样品，以及描述金矿和银矿床的论文，以及一份锂矿，这是我们谈话时一位女士捡起的。
Blackmore is new to lithium.
Blackmore 对锂来说是新手。
He started learning about it only last year.
他去年才开始了解这一点。
“We were always gold guys,” he said.
“我们一直都是金人，”他说。
“We go wherever the market is.”
“哪里有市场，我们就去哪里。”
I told Blackmore that it was my first time at PDAC and asked him what I should know.
我告诉 Blackmore，这是我第一次来 PDAC，并问他我应该知道什么。
“A mine is a hole in the ground with a liar standing on the edge,” he said.
“地雷是地上的一个洞，一个骗子站在边缘，”他说。
His point was not that PDAC was full of scam artists, though the conference’s history does include some notable grifts.
他的观点并不是说 PDAC 充满了骗子，尽管该会议的历史确实存在一些值得注意的欺诈行为。
Backers of the notorious Bre-X fraud amplified a fake gold claim in Indonesia over the course of several PDACs in the 1990s.
臭名昭著的 Bre-X 欺诈案的支持者在 20 世纪 90 年代的几次 PDAC 中放大了印度尼西亚的假黄金索赔。
The company went from trading as a penny stock to reaching six billion Canadian dollars in market value before the sham fell apart.
在这个骗局瓦解之前，该公司的市值已从低价股涨至 60 亿加元。
A geologist involved in the scheme allegedly committed suicide by jumping out of a helicopter over the jungle.
据称，参与该计划的一名地质学家在丛林上空从直升机上跳下自杀。
One investigation concluded that the geologist had been strangled, his suicide faked, according to the Calgary Herald .
据《卡尔加里先驱报》报道，一项调查得出的结论是，这位地质学家是被勒死的，他的自杀是假的。
There are persistent rumors that he was later spotted alive, according to a well-connected international-mining source who knew some of the players firsthand.
据一位与一些国际矿业人士有密切联系且对其中一些球员有第一手了解的消息人士称，一直有传言称他后来被发现还活着。
The affair was loosely adapted into a 2016 movie starring Matthew McConaughey.
这段恋情被松散地改编成 2016 年由马修·麦康纳主演的电影。
Blackmore meant that mining is risky.
布莱克莫尔的意思是采矿是有风险的。
Markets are fickle.
市场变化无常。
And promising ore deposits often prove disappointing.
有前景的矿藏往往令人失望。
When someone says that a mine or a trend is a sure thing, some skepticism is probably warranted.
当有人说矿山或趋势是确定的事情时，一些怀疑可能是有道理的。
Just a few years ago, cobalt was the battery metal of the day, but its scorching stock-market rise led to an attendant bust — and now other minerals, like manganese, are replacing it in the supply chain.
就在几年前，钴还是当时的电池金属，但其股市的飙升导致了随之而来的萧条——现在锰等其他矿物正在供应链中取代它。
All of this adds an extra layer of intrigue at PDAC.
所有这些都为 PDAC 增添了一层额外的吸引力。
While the schedule includes numerous technical panels that cater to geologists and data nerds, PDAC is, ultimately, an investment conference.
虽然日程安排包括众多迎合地质学家和数据迷需求的技术小组，但 PDAC 归根结底是一场投资会议。
Companies large and small spend four days certifying the quality of their ore deposits, the cozy relationships they have with government regulators, the heights they expect their stock to climb.
大大小小的公司花了四天的时间来证明其矿床的质量、他们与政府监管机构的友好关系以及他们期望股票上涨的高度。
Investors, meanwhile, are seeking good bets for their money.
与此同时，投资者正在寻找更好的投资机会。
These are not the sort of people, in other words, who tend to endorse nascent left-wing governments asking multinational mining companies to pay up.
换句话说，这些人并不倾向于支持新生的左翼政府要求跨国矿业公司付款。
But that’s precisely what the leaders of Chile, which has the largest lithium reserves in the world, plan to do.
但这正是拥有世界上最大锂储量的智利领导人计划做的事情。
The conflict between Western financial interests and an empowered Global South has rapidly come to define the shape of the battery-metals boom.
西方金融利益与强大的南方国家之间的冲突已迅速决定了电池金属繁荣的形态。
And it became concrete on PDAC’s second morning, at a presentation by Chile’s mining delegation.
PDAC 第二天早上，在智利矿业代表团的演讲中，这一点变得具体化。
Outside the conference room, the hallway was packed.
会议室外，走廊里挤满了人。
Men in navy suits soberly conversed in English and Spanish over weak coffee, filling every seat once the doors opened.
门一打开，穿着海军蓝西装的男人就着淡咖啡用英语和西班牙语严肃地交谈着，每个座位都坐满了人。
On a raised dais at the front of the room sat a group of Chilean mineral and diplomatic officials, including Raúl Fernández, the ambassador to Canada, and the country’s undersecretary for mining, Willy Kracht.
房间前面的高台上坐着一群智利矿产和外交官员，其中包括驻加拿大大使劳尔·费尔南德斯 (Raúl Fernández) 和该国负责矿业的副部长威利·克拉赫特 (Willy Kracht)。
The Chilean economy is inextricably tied to mining.
智利经济与采矿业有着千丝万缕的联系。
It is the world’s largest copper producer and second-largest lithium producer behind Australia.
它是世界上最大的铜生产国和仅次于澳大利亚的第二大锂生产国。
The industry makes up more than half of Chile’s exports and employs one out of every thirteen workers.
该行业占智利出口额的一半以上，雇用了三分之一的工人。
Kracht, who has a thick black beard and a calm demeanor, is a top mining official in Gabriel Boric’s government.
克拉赫特留着浓密的黑胡子，举止冷静，是加布里埃尔·博里克政府的高级矿业官员。
A leftist elected in 2021, Boric pledged to overhaul decades of pro-business, low-regulation governance in Chile — especially related to natural resources.
作为 2021 年当选的左翼人士，博里克承诺彻底改革智利数十年的亲商、低监管治理，尤其是与自然资源相关的治理。
Last year, the administration held a constitutional referendum, meant to replace Chile’s Pinochet-era governing framework.
去年，政府举行了宪法公投，旨在取代智利皮诺切特时代的治理框架。
At one point, it looked like the new constitution was going to nationalize all lithium resources.
一度，新宪法似乎要将所有锂资源国有化。
Voters ultimately rejected the proposal.
选民最终拒绝了该提议。
Kracht told the PDAC crowd that the reforms were overly ambitious; they contained “too much of everything.” He reassured investors that future constitutional measures were unlikely to include full nationalization of the sought-after mineral.
克拉克特告诉 PDAC 人群，改革过于雄心勃勃；它们包含了“太多的一切”。他向投资者保证，未来的宪法措施不太可能包括将这种备受追捧的矿产完全国有化。
Going forward, he said, Chile would create a publicly managed lithium company and pursue other reforms, like raising the royalty tax on mining companies and increasing its domestic copper smelting capacity, rather than shipping the concentrate overseas.
他表示，展望未来，智利将创建一家公共管理的锂公司，并推行其他改革，例如提高矿业公司的特许权使用费和增加国内铜冶炼能力，而不是将精矿运往海外。
“We have the right as a country to have ownership in the industry,” he told the crowd.
“作为一个国家，我们有权拥有该行业的所有权，”他告诉人群。
Kracht then turned to the elephant in the room — the “social unrest” that had “people around the world worried.” In 2019, protests against public-transit prices, police corruption, and widespread unemployment spread from the capital city of Santiago to every region in Chile.
克拉赫特然后转向房间里的大象——让“世界各地的人们担心”的“社会动荡”。 2019年，针对公共交通价格、警察腐败和普遍失业的抗议活动从首都圣地亚哥蔓延到智利各个地区。
The protests led to the downfall of President Sebastián Piñera, a billionaire businessman with a cozy relationship to the mining industry — the Pandora Papers revealed that Piñera took money from a mining executive in exchange for support of an environmentally destructive copper and iron mine — and propelled Boric into office.
抗议活动导致总统塞巴斯蒂安·皮涅拉垮台，这位亿万富翁与采矿业关系密切——潘多拉文件透露，皮涅拉从一名矿业高管那里收钱，以换取对破坏环境的铜铁矿的支持——并推动博里奇上台。
Kracht seemed intent on reassuring the crowd that investing in Chile would be worth it.
克拉赫特似乎一心要向群众保证，在智利投资是值得的。
He pulled up a graph that showed foreign financing of Chilean mining had increased since 2018, despite the ongoing protests.
他调出了一张图表，显示自 2018 年以来，尽管抗议活动持续不断，但智利矿业的外国融资有所增加。
“Markets understand,” he said.
“市场明白，”他说。
It was hard to gauge the impact of Kracht’s reassurances.
很难评估克拉克特保证的影响。
Even among their own, in a boom-time atmosphere, PDAC attendees were noticeably wary about making definitive statements about much of anything.
即使在繁荣时期的氛围中，PDAC 与会者对于对任何事情做出明确的声明也明显持谨慎态度。
At a booth for Albemarle, one of two private companies currently producing Chilean lithium, I asked a representative whether the country’s new left-wing government and years of protests worried potential investors.
在目前生产智利锂的两家私营公司之一雅宝公司的展台上，我询问一位代表，该国新的左翼政府和多年的抗议活动是否让潜在投资者感到担忧。
“Yes,” she said, but wouldn’t elaborate.
“是的，”她说，但没有详细说明。
She directed me to her supervisor, who wasn’t there and declined to comment over email.
她引导我去找她的主管，但她当时不在场，并且拒绝通过电子邮件发表评论。
(Kracht’s chief of staff suggested that some of his remarks “may be misinterpreted,” but didn’t dispute any specific claim.)
（克拉赫特的幕僚长暗示他的一些言论“可能被误解”，但没有对任何具体说法提出异议。）
As it turned out, Kracht’s conciliatory tone was a head fake.
事实证明，克拉赫特的安抚语气是假的。
In April, about six weeks after PDAC, Boric announced in a nationally televised speech that his administration planned to do what PDAC attendees might not have been led to expect: establish state ownership of all Chile’s lithium.
今年 4 月，PDAC 结束后大约六周，博里克在一次全国电视讲话中宣布，他的政府计划做 PDAC 与会者可能没有想到的事情：建立智利所有锂矿的国家所有权。
This transition, per Reuters, will require that private companies either partner with the state, which will command majority ownership, or give up their operations after their mining permits expire.
据路透社报道，这一转变将要求私营公司要么与拥有多数股权的国家合作，要么在采矿许可证到期后放弃运营。
In his speech, Boric referenced Chile’s nationalization of copper in 1971 under President Salvador Allende, who was subsequently deposed by Pinochet in a coup supported by the CIA.
博里克在演讲中提到了 1971 年萨尔瓦多·阿连德总统领导下的智利对铜的国有化，随后阿连德在中央情报局支持的政变中被皮诺切特废黜。
Public lithium ownership, Boric said, will help create “a Chile that distributes wealth we all generate in a more just way.” (Stock prices for lithium-mining companies in the country dipped after this news, as media reports described investors as “spooked.”)
博里克表示，公共锂所有权将有助于创建“一个以更公正的方式分配我们所有人创造的财富的智利”。 （该消息传出后，该国锂矿公司的股价下跌，媒体报道称投资者“受到惊吓”。）
This news came after PDAC, but corporate unease about unruly left-wing governments was in evidence at the conference, if you found the right room.
这一消息是在 PDAC 会议之后发布的，但如果你找到合适的房间，企业对不守规矩的左翼政府的不安在会议上显而易见。
One panel, called “Mining related disputes with a focus on Latin America: political risk and mitigation tools,” featured representatives from two law firms — one Colombian, the other Ecuadorian.
一个名为“以拉丁美洲为重点的采矿相关纠纷：政治风险和缓解工具”的小组由来自两家律师事务所的代表组成，其中一家是哥伦比亚律师事务所，另一家是厄瓜多尔律师事务所。
Panelists instructed audience members on how they might use international commerce agreements to protect their investments from leftists.
小组成员指导观众如何利用国际商业协议来保护他们的投资免受左翼分子的侵害。
The platform of Colombian President Petro, who has pledged to support Indigenous rights against mining companies, “is based unfortunately on the rights of ethnic communities,” said Álvaro José Rodríguez, a Colombian natural resource lawyer.
哥伦比亚总统佩特罗承诺支持原住民权利，反对矿业公司，但他的纲领“不幸的是基于少数民族社区的权利”，哥伦比亚自然资源律师阿尔瓦罗·何塞·罗德里格斯说。
(Rodríguez later elaborated over email, writing, “What I meant when I said that Gustavo Petro’s political platform ‘is based unfortunately on the rights of ethnic communities’ is that the Petro government is too focused on the rights of ethnic communities and less so on the rights of other stakeholders and the needs of the country.”)
（罗德里格斯后来在电子邮件中详细阐述，写道：“当我说古斯塔沃·佩特罗的政治纲领‘不幸的是基于少数民族社区的权利’时，我的意思是，佩特罗政府过于关注少数民族社区的权利，而较少关注其他利益相关者的权利和国家的需求。”）
“He is not only a leftist, but it is fair to call him a populist,” Rodríguez said.
“他不仅是左派，而且可以公平地称他为民粹主义者，”罗德里格斯说。
“He was elected on a pro-minority and pro-environmental platform.”
“他是在支持少数族裔和支持环保的平台上当选的。”
T here was at least one person at PDAC free — and by that I mean rich enough — to speak his mind.
PDAC 中至少有一个人可以自由地表达自己的想法，我指的是足够富有的人。
That was Robert Friedland, a billionaire financier with a knack for funding the exploration of rich and obscure mineral deposits.
那人就是罗伯特·弗里德兰（Robert Friedland），一位亿万富翁金融家，擅长资助勘探丰富而鲜为人知的矿藏。
These include a nickel find in Labrador, which he sold in the 1990s for more than four billion Canadian dollars, and a colossal gold mine in Mongolia.
其中包括在拉布拉多发现的镍矿（他在 20 世纪 90 年代以超过 40 亿加元的价格出售）和蒙古的一座巨大金矿。
Like so many others, Friedland had something to sell at this year’s conference.
和其他许多人一样，弗里德兰在今年的会议上也有一些东西可以推销。
A PDAC luminary, he was given a headline speaking slot to make his pitch to a packed conference hall.
作为 PDAC 的杰出人物，他获得了一个头条新闻演讲机会，可以在挤满人的会议厅中进行演讲。
By the time I got there, nearly every chair was claimed.
当我到达那里时，几乎所有的椅子都被占了。
I stood in a crowd at the back, awkwardly taking notes against a pillar.
我站在人群后面，笨拙地靠着一根柱子做笔记。
At 72, Friedland speaks with the meandering cadence of an old hippie, which his biography suggests that he is.
72 岁的弗里德兰说话带着老嬉皮士的蜿蜒节奏，他的传记表明他就是这样。
In the 1970s, he left Bowdoin College after he and two others were caught with 24,000 tablets of LSD in what was then, according to The New York Times, the “largest ever” seizure of the drug in New England.
20 世纪 70 年代，他和另外两人被发现携带 24,000 粒迷幻药，据《纽约时报》报道，这是当时新英格兰地区“有史以来规模最大”的一次缉获毒品事件，随后他离开了鲍登学院。
Later, he ran an apple orchard where Steve Jobs took psychedelics (the experience helped inspire the name “Apple”).
后来，他经营了一个苹果园，史蒂夫·乔布斯在那里服用迷幻药（这次经历启发了“苹果”这个名字）。
In his speech, Friedland touched on topics ranging from the steam engine to the Blues Brothers and the Harvard-Yale football game, made fun of Joe Biden, and suggested that the U.S. should not go to war with China over Taiwan because Taiwanese and Chinese people are hard to tell apart.
弗里兰德在演讲中谈到了从蒸汽机到蓝调兄弟、哈佛-耶鲁橄榄球赛等话题，还取笑乔·拜登，并建议美国不要因为台湾问题与中国开战，因为台湾人和中国人很难区分。
Friedland also touted his new mining technology startup, I-Pulse, with funding from Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and mining giant BHP.
弗里兰德还宣传了他的新采矿技术初创公司 I-Pulse，该公司获得了比尔·盖茨、杰夫·贝佐斯和矿业巨头必和必拓的资助。
He lamented the good old days of a more integrated global economy, back before the financial crisis, tariff fights, and trade wars, when China was “making almost everything the world consumed.” Friedland was especially unhappy with the political shifts in South America.
他感叹全球经济更加一体化的美好时光，早在金融危机、关税战和贸易战之前，当时中国“几乎制造了世界消费的所有东西”。弗里德兰对南美洲的政治转变尤其不满。
As examples he listed the “crazy people running Colombia”; the “36-year-old communist” in Chile; “Evo” (who is no longer the president of Bolivia); and Brazilian president “Lula, a proven crook.”
作为例子，他列举了“统治哥伦比亚的疯狂人”；智利的“36岁共产党员”； “Evo”（不再是玻利维亚总统）；巴西总统“卢拉，一个久经考验的骗子。”
Fortunately for the audience, Friedland has a solution for investors who share his fear of South America’s leftward turn: southern Africa, where, it turns out, Friedland is developing some enormous projects with his company, Ivanhoe Mines.
对观众来说幸运的是，弗里德兰为那些和他一样担心南美左转的投资者提供了一个解决方案：南非，事实证明，弗里德兰正在与他的艾芬豪矿业公司开发一些巨大的项目。
He described the region as “relatively unexplored” in its mineral resources and boasting a ready workforce.
他形容该地区的矿产资源“相对未开发”，并拥有现成的劳动力。
“The virus bounced off them because they’re young,” he told the crowd.
“病毒从他们身上反弹，因为他们还年轻，”他告诉人群。
Mid-speech, Friedland paused to play videos that stitched together dramatic footage of mining equipment in motion and hydroelectric power generation for net-zero carbon operations, interspersed with shots of smiling local workers, all backed by a pounding EDM soundtrack.
演讲中途，弗里德兰停下来播放视频，这些视频将采矿设备运转中的戏剧性镜头和净零碳作业的水力发电的镜头拼接在一起，中间穿插着当地工人微笑的镜头，所有这些都配有震撼人心的 EDM 配乐。
The first project he was promoting, Kamoa-Kakula in the DRC, is set to produce more than 500,000 tons per year of the highest grade copper.
他推动的第一个项目是位于刚果民主共和国的 Kamoa-Kakula，预计每年生产超过 50 万吨最高品位的铜。
Here, Ivanhoe is partnering with Zijin Mining Group, one of China’s largest companies.
艾芬豪正在与中国最大的公司之一紫金矿业集团合作。
The second, which Friedland called the largest precious-metals project in the world, is in South Africa.
第二个项目位于南非，弗里德兰称其为世界上最大的贵金属项目。
Beginning next year, the Platreef mine is expected to yield a treasure trove of sought-after minerals — platinum, palladium, nickel, gold, rhodium.
从明年开始，普拉特雷夫矿预计将产出备受追捧的矿物宝库——铂、钯、镍、金、铑。
Friedland is far from alone in turning to Africa to feed the world’s infinite appetite for battery metals.
弗里德兰并不是唯一一家转向非洲来满足世界对电池金属的无限需求的公司。
In a bid to counter China’s tightening hold on southern Africa’s mining industry, this past January the U.S. signed a memorandum of understanding to create a battery supply chain with the DRC and Zambia.
为了对抗中国对南部非洲采矿业的收紧控制，美国于今年一月签署了一份谅解备忘录，与刚果民主共和国和赞比亚建立电池供应链。
The DRC supplies about 70 percent of the cobalt used in rechargeable batteries, with approximately a quarter of that coming from what are known as “artisanal small-scale mines,” according to a report from the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights.
根据纽约大学斯特恩商业与人权中心的一份报告，刚果民主共和国供应了约 70% 用于充电电池的钴，其中约四分之一来自所谓的“手工小型矿山”。
These are often illegal operations that use child laborers.
这些通常是使用童工的非法作业。
Hundreds of thousands of Congolese artisanal miners dig for cobalt and copper with picks and shovels, handling toxic heavy metals with their bare hands for as little as one dollar per day.
数十万刚果手工采矿者用镐和铲子挖掘钴和铜，徒手处理有毒重金属，每天的收入仅为一美元。
Through tangled networks of traders, buyers, and processing firms, these metals end up in the products of the largest companies in the world, including Tesla and General Motors.
通过贸易商、买家和加工公司的错综复杂的网络，这些金属最终成为世界上最大公司（包括特斯拉和通用汽车）的产品。
(In 2022, Tesla’s shareholders rejected a proposal that would have required detailed reporting on child labor in its mineral sources.)
（2022 年，特斯拉股东拒绝了一项要求详细报告其矿产资源中童工情况的提案。）
Governments and companies descending on the Congo and exploiting its resources: there’s a term for it.
政府和公司涌入刚果并开发其资源：有一个术语。
“This economic model is a colonial model,” Jacques Nzumbu, a Congolese Jesuit priest, told me.
“这种经济模式是殖民模式，”刚果耶稣会神父雅克·恩宗布告诉我。
Nzumbu recently moved to Montreal for a graduate program, but before that he spent years in the Congo working with artisanal miners in Lualaba, a province in the southern DRC that is a significant source of cobalt and copper.
Nzumbu 最近搬到蒙特利尔攻读研究生课程，但在此之前，他在刚果卢阿拉巴省与手工采矿者一起工作了数年。卢阿拉巴省是刚果民主共和国南部的一个省，是钴和铜的重要来源。
Nzumbu described protests — put down by the Congolese army in 2019 — against the mining giant Glencore.
恩宗布描述了 2019 年刚果军队镇压的针对矿业巨头嘉能可的抗议活动。
After a cave-in killed at least 43 small-scale miners, who had been sneaking into a Glencore-run copper-and-cobalt site to do their own mining, state security forces brutally evicted thousands of other independent miners nearby.
至少 43 名小规模矿工偷偷潜入嘉能可 (Glencore) 经营的铜钴矿场进行自己的采矿，一场塌方造成至少 43 名小规模矿工死亡，之后国家安全部队残酷地驱逐了附近数千名其他独立矿工。
“Local people were very angry with Glencore,” Nzumbu recalled.
“当地人对嘉能可非常愤怒，”恩宗布回忆道。
“We see in the Congo every day, more than 5,000, 7,000 trucks, with cobalt and copper going out of our country without transformation” of Congolese society.
“我们在刚果每天都看到超过5000、7000辆卡车，载着钴和铜就离开了我们的国家”，刚果社会没有发生任何变化。
At PDAC, though, the general sense was that metal mining will be transformative.
不过，PDAC 普遍认为金属采矿将带来变革。
It will help save the planet and provide jobs, an assumption summed up in the title of the panel “Better lives, better climate: Latin America and its minerals.” Mining’s necessity was accepted; its toll on people and land was quickly smoothed over, when mentioned at all.
它将有助于拯救地球并提供就业机会，这一假设在小组标题“更好的生活，更好的气候：拉丁美洲及其矿产”中得到了总结。采矿的必要性被接受；只要有人提及，它对人类和土地造成的损失很快就被抹平了。
Most expressions of environmental concern seemed calculated to justify more mining.
大多数对环境问题的表达似乎都是为了证明更多的采矿是合理的。
Indeed, this was how Friedland ended his speech: with a Carl Sagan quote and a call for the mining industry to save the planet.
事实上，弗里德兰就是这样结束演讲的：引用了卡尔·萨根的话，并呼吁采矿业拯救地球。
The slogan of one of Friedland’s subsidiary companies, Ivanhoe Electric, drove home the point: “Reinventing mining for the electrification of everything.”
弗里德兰的子公司艾芬豪电气 (Ivanhoe Electric) 的口号充分说明了这一点：“重塑采矿业，实现万物电气化。”
I f you’ve seen photos of lithium extraction, they are probably of brine ponds: huge neon-turquoise lakes that stand in striking contrast to the surrounding white-gray desert.
如果您看过锂提取的照片，它们可能是盐水池：巨大的霓虹绿松石湖与周围的白灰色沙漠形成鲜明对比。
Lithium tends to occur in alkaline, mineral-rich brines on salt flats.
锂往往存在于盐滩上富含矿物质的碱性盐水中。
This water is pumped to the surface, mixed with other chemicals, and left to evaporate in the scorching desert sun, leaving a concentrate behind.
这些水被泵送到地表，与其他化学物质混合，然后在沙漠灼热的阳光下蒸发，留下浓缩物。
Lithium production requires more water than other battery metals, but when it comes to sheer environmental destruction, it’s hard to beat copper.
与其他电池金属相比，锂的生产需要更多的水，但就纯粹的环境破坏而言，很难击败铜。
Copper is extracted from gigantic open-pit mines, hundreds to thousands of feet deep.
铜是从数百至数千英尺深的大型露天矿中提取的。
To refine copper ore, sulfuric acid solutions are typically leached through the rock piles, which creates toxic slurries that carry mercury, arsenic, and other poisonous metals.
为了精炼铜矿石，通常会通过岩石堆浸出硫酸溶液，从而产生含有汞、砷和其他有毒金属的有毒浆液。
At large copper mines — like Bingham Canyon in Utah, the world’s deepest open-pit mine — this pollution requires treatment “in perpetuity” to prevent spills and damage to groundwater, according to a report by the environmental nonprofit Earthworks.
根据环境非营利组织 Earthworks 的一份报告，在大型铜矿（例如世界上最深的露天矿犹他州宾厄姆峡谷），这种污染需要“永久”处理，以防止泄漏和对地下水的破坏。
Every day at the small mines in the Congo, artisanal miners climb into pits and tunnels filled with toxic water from cobalt and copper extraction.
每天，在刚果的小矿场，手工采矿者都会爬进充满钴和铜提取有毒水的矿坑和隧道。
Specifics of production vary by mineral type, but spiking demand for battery metals will mean a lot more mining of this sort all over the world.
生产细节因矿物类型而异，但对电池金属的需求激增将意味着全世界都会有更多此类采矿活动。
The mining industry has always provided an economic justification for the displacement and exploitation of people all over the world: the colonization of the Americas for gold, silver, iron, and copper; blood diamonds in West and Central Africa; child labor in cobalt mines in the DRC; and thousands of deaths linked to paramilitaries financed by multinational mining companies in Colombia.
采矿业一直为全世界人民的流离失所和剥削提供经济理由：美洲的金、银、铁和铜的殖民；西非和中非的血钻；刚果民主共和国钴矿中的童工；数千人死亡与哥伦比亚跨国矿业公司资助的准军事部队有关。
The move to renewable energy will likely expose the poorest people on the planet to more of the same from these fierce extractive forces.
向可再生能源的转变可能会让地球上最贫穷的人面临更多来自这些猛烈的榨取力量的威胁。
A Nature study published late last year found that more than half of the materials needed for the green energy transformation are located on or near relatively undeveloped land where Indigenous and peasant populations live.
去年年底发表的《自然》研究发现，绿色能源转型所需的一半以上材料位于原住民和农民居住的相对未开发的土地上或附近。
As mines encroach on these communities, they will be removed from their homelands or forced to live with profound industrial pollution.
随着地雷侵蚀这些社区，他们将被迫离开家园或被迫生活在严重的工业污染中。
The focus at this year’s PDAC was primarily on the economic benefits for these communities.
今年 PDAC 的重点主要是这些社区的经济效益。
First Nations speakers attested that mining can be good for Indigenous communities.
原住民发言人证明采矿对原住民社区有好处。
“Before the mine, we had nothing,” Donny McCallum told the crowd at a panel on Indigenous economic inclusion.
“在矿井之前，我们一无所有，”唐尼·麦卡勒姆在土著经济包容性小组会议上对人群说。
McCallum is a member of the Marcel Colomb First Nation (MCFN), in Manitoba.
麦卡勒姆是曼尼托巴省马塞尔·科伦姆原住民 (MCFN) 的成员。
In 2022, the nation signed joint ventures with two contracting companies designed to help secure employment for members at a nearby gold mine.
2022 年，该国与两家承包公司签署了合资企业协议，旨在帮助确保附近金矿成员的就业。
“We want a piece of the pie,” McCallum explained.
“我们想要分一杯羹，”麦卡勒姆解释道。
The panel’s moderator, Christian Sinclair, who is Opaskwayak Cree, encouraged Canada’s First Nations to follow MCFN’s example and form Indigenous economic development corporations.
该小组的主持人克里斯蒂安·辛克莱（Opaskwayak Cree）鼓励加拿大原住民效仿 MCFN 的榜样，成立原住民经济发展公司。
He pointed to the Southern Ute Tribe of southwestern Colorado, which sits atop a rich formation of coal-bed methane.
他指的是科罗拉多州西南部的南尤特部落，该部落坐落在丰富的煤层气之上。
The tribe used these resources to build a three-billion-dollar organization.
该部落利用这些资源建立了一个价值三十亿美元的组织。
The only note of hesitation about tying the well-being of First Nations to mining industry profits was sounded by an older man with a long ponytail during the Q&A portion of this session.
在本次会议的问答部分中，一位留着长马尾辫的老人对将原住民的福祉与采矿业利润联系起来唯一犹豫不决。
“The land cannot sustain making the most amount of money in the least amount of time,” he told the panelists.
“土地无法维持在最短的时间内赚最多的钱，”他告诉小组成员。
I caught up with this man, Rick Cheechoo, later on, at a reception for PDAC’s Indigenous Program over mini bison potpies and wild rice salad.
后来，我在 PDAC 土著计划的招待会上遇到了这个人，Rick Cheechoo，吃了迷你野牛馅饼和野米沙拉。
He is a member of the Moose Cree First Nation.
他是穆斯克里原住民的成员。
A large gold mine operates near his nation’s traditional territory, he told me.
他告诉我，在他的国家的传统领土附近有一座大型金矿。
There have been benefits — he described agreements between the mining company and the First Nation that provide jobs and healthcare — but a company’s drive for profit puts it at odds with some tribal needs, especially preserving their culture and treaty rights and ensuring that families displaced by industry are compensated.
好处是有的——他描述了矿业公司与原住民之间提供就业和医疗保健的协议——但公司对利润的追求使其与一些部落的需求相矛盾，特别是保护他们的文化和条约权利，并确保因工业而流离失所的家庭得到补偿。
Historically, mining has brought disruption and violence to Canada’s First Nations, and there’s no reason to believe that’s changing.
从历史上看，采矿业给加拿大原住民带来了破坏和暴力，而且没有理由相信这种情况正在改变。
The past decade has seen numerous confrontations, with protestors blockading mines and arrested en masse by militarized police.
过去十年发生了多次对抗，抗议者封锁地雷并被军事警察大规模逮捕。
Even as the conference was happening, members of the Naskapi and Innu nations were fighting an iron mine in Quebec — a situation that, as far as I could tell, was not addressed by anyone at PDAC.
就在会议召开的同时，纳斯卡皮族和因努族的成员正在魁北克省的一座铁矿上进行战斗——据我所知，PDAC 中没有任何人解决过这种情况。
A re there no alternatives to this rush to extract the world’s metals and minerals?
除了开采世界金属和矿物的热潮之外，还有其他选择吗？
At PDAC, almost no one asks this question.
在 PDAC，几乎没有人问这个问题。
The assumption was baked into virtually every convention-floor booth and conference-room panel: minerals must be extracted.
几乎每个会议厅的展位和会议室的面板上都包含这样的假设：必须提取矿物。
The market and a cooler planet demand it.
市场和更凉爽的星球需要它。
ESG and other signs of virtuous consumption, like partnerships with Indigenous communities, permit it.
ESG 和其他良性消费迹象（例如与原住民社区的合作伙伴关系）允许这样做。
Even beyond PDAC, alternate visions can be hard to come by, but a new study from the Climate and Community Project and the University of California, Davis aims to expand our imaginations.
即使在 PDAC 之外，也很难找到替代的愿景，但气候与社区项目和加州大学戴维斯分校的一项新研究旨在扩展我们的想象力。
It is an important piece of scholarship, arguing that we may not need to accept a future in which the mining industry — with the blessing of governments — continues to tear up the world’s forests and occupy its deserts.
这是一项重要的学术成果，认为我们可能不需要接受采矿业在政府的支持下继续破坏世界森林并占领沙漠的未来。
Focusing on lithium consumption, the report models different developmental pathways for the U.S., using variables like car ownership, the size of E.V.
该报告以锂消费为重点，利用汽车保有量、电动汽车规模等变量，模拟了美国的不同发展路径。
batteries, city density, public transit, and battery recycling.
电池、城市密度、公共交通和电池回收。
The worst-case scenario, the authors claim, would result in major lithium extraction, as PDAC attendees expect.
作者声称，最坏的情况将导致大量锂提取，正如 PDAC 与会者所期望的那样。
But they show that reducing the size of E.V.
但他们表明，减小 E.V. 的尺寸。
batteries could shrink expected U.S. lithium demand in 2050 by 42 percent.
电池可能会使 2050 年美国锂需求预期减少 42%。
(Car companies, it’s worth noting, are not trending toward smaller vehicles.
（值得注意的是，汽车公司并没有倾向于小型车辆。
In April, G.M.
4 月，G.M.
announced that it was ending production of the Chevy Bolt, the company’s smallest E.V., in order to build more electric trucks and SUVs.) But even if average battery size were to remain the same, cutting car ownership rates, largely by creating denser cities and better public transit, could shrink total lithium demand by somewhere between 18 percent and 66 percent, according to the study.
宣布将停止生产该公司最小的电动汽车雪佛兰 Bolt，以生产更多的电动卡车和 SUV。）但研究显示，即使平均电池尺寸保持不变，主要通过创建更密集的城市和更好的公共交通来降低汽车保有率，也可能使锂总需求减少 18% 至 66%。
The spread, or not, of recycling and reusing minerals is another crucial variable.
矿物回收和再利用的扩散与否是另一个关键变量。
John Thompson, the longtime industry insider I spoke to, attended PDAC this year in part as a representative of Regeneration, a company that plans to re-mine abandoned sites and use the profits to restore their original ecosystems.
约翰·汤普森 (John Thompson) 是我采访过的长期业内人士，他今年参加了 PDAC，其部分身份是作为 Regenesis 公司的代表，该公司计划重新开采废弃矿场，并利用所得利润来恢复其原始生态系统。
He’s a recycling proponent, and hopes that the rest of the industry will catch on soon.
他是回收利用的支持者，并希望该行业的其他公司能够尽快流行起来。
“Everybody would say recycling is important,” he told me.
“每个人都会说回收很重要，”他告诉我。
But “most people in this conference aren’t interested.”
但“这次会议的大多数人都不感兴趣。”
Even the most optimistic version of the future, involving reduced demand and robust recycling, will still require some mining.
即使是最乐观的未来版本，包括需求减少和强劲的回收，仍然需要一些采矿。
What this ought to look like increasingly preoccupies Patrick Donnelly, who works for the Center for Biological Diversity in Nevada.
在内华达州生物多样性中心工作的帕特里克·唐纳利（Patrick Donnelly）越来越关注这应该是什么样子。
I know Donnelly — as do a lot of other journalists in the West who cover extractive industries — as a ferociously dedicated conservation advocate.
我知道唐纳利——就像许多其他报道采掘业的西方记者一样——是一位狂热奉献的保护倡导者。
A few years ago, Donnelly realized that no one was tracking all of the American lithium projects and decided to do so himself.
几年前，唐纳利意识到没有人跟踪所有美国锂项目，并决定亲自跟踪。
His map now shows more than 115 potential mines, clustered in his home state.
他的地图现在显示了超过 115 个潜在矿场，集中在他的家乡。
“It’s the biggest mineral rush of our lifetime,” he told me over the phone.
“这是我们一生中最大的矿产热潮，”他在电话中告诉我。
In an ideal world, Donnelly said, the U.S. government would put a moratorium on speculative claims and instead survey all of the country’s mineral deposits in order to identify the least harmful places to mine.
唐纳利说，在理想的情况下，美国政府将暂停投机性索赔，而是调查全国所有矿藏，以确定危害最小的采矿地点。
This isn’t happening and won’t anytime soon.
这不会发生，也不会很快发生。
In May, the U.S. fast-tracked a manganese and zinc mine in Arizona, the first mining project added to a program designed to expedite the clean-energy transition and other infrastructure developments.
今年五月，美国快速启动了亚利桑那州的锰锌矿项目，这是旨在加快清洁能源转型和其他基础设施发展计划中的第一个采矿项目。
But Donnelly also fears that anti-mining sentiment is turning people against electric cars — and against lithium extraction altogether.
但唐纳利还担心，反采矿情绪正在让人们反对电动汽车，甚至反对锂开采。
“There is zero chance we can recycle our way out of the problem,” he said.
“我们通过回收利用来解决问题的可能性为零，”他说。
This is true.
这是真实的。
There isn’t enough lithium on the market for battery recycling to realistically meet present demand, let alone the expected increase.
市场上没有足够的锂用于电池回收，无法实际满足当前的需求，更不用说预期的增长了。
“There is an element of the mining resistance movement that opposes not just particular mines but all lithium and all electric vehicles,” Donnelly went on.
“抵制采矿运动中有一个元素不仅反对特定的矿山，还反对所有锂和所有电动汽车，”唐纳利继续说道。
“Unless we’re talking about deindustrializing society, which I don’t think appeals to most people, we need to be thinking about how and where we’re getting our lithium, and critically examine our own use of these minerals, like the cell phone I’m speaking to you on now, with minerals from South America, where locals say the mines are destroying their environment and community.”
“除非我们谈论的是去工业化社会（我认为这对大多数人来说没有吸引力），否则我们需要考虑如何以及在哪里获取锂，并严格审查我们自己对这些矿物的使用，就像我现在对你说话的手机，其中含有来自南美的矿物，当地人说那里的矿山正在破坏他们的环境和社区。”
Such are the paradoxes of the globalized green economy, in which blocking a mine in one place means shifting extraction somewhere else.
这就是全球化绿色经济的悖论，在一个地方封锁矿山就意味着将开采转移到其他地方。
We want to decarbonize, yet our lives require ever-increasing supplies of energy.
我们想要脱碳，但我们的生活需要不断增加的能源供应。
And so climate-minded consumers and the mining industry are locked in a self-justifying embrace.
因此，具有气候意识的消费者和采矿业陷入了自我辩解的拥抱之中。
We buy an E.V.
我们买了一辆电动车
and think we are doing right by those vulnerable to rising temperatures and tides.
并认为我们正在为那些容易受到气温上升和潮汐影响的人们做正确的事。
But in trying to continue consuming as we are used to, buying stuff and zipping down the highway, we have exposed many of those same vulnerable people to another threat — the market’s readiness to kill, poison, and displace them to get minerals and metals.
但在试图继续像我们习惯的那样消费、买东西并沿着高速公路快速行驶时，我们让许多同样脆弱的人面临另一种威胁——市场准备杀死、毒害和取代他们以获得矿物和金属。
The mining industry, meanwhile, benefits from the self-satisfied consumerism of the E.V.
与此同时，采矿业受益于 E.V. 的自我满足的消费主义。
buyer.
买方。
For all of its disdain for environmentalists, the industry needs green consumers who seek absolution for their carbon-intensive ways of life.
尽管该行业对环保主义者不屑一顾，但它需要绿色消费者为他们的碳密集型生活方式寻求宽恕。
With their complacent inattention to the injustices inflicted by the green economy, these consumers not only fund the industry’s expansion but give it moral cover.
由于对绿色经济造成的不公正现象漠不关心，这些消费者不仅为该行业的扩张提供资金，而且为其提供道德掩护。
P DAC started with a party and ended with another.
P DAC 以一场派对开始，以另一场派对结束。
After the first full day, I joined a horde of people streaming through the doors of a large conference hall for a networking event.
第一整天结束后，我和一大群人一起涌进一个大型会议厅的大门，参加一个社交活动。
Hundreds of people listened as a speaker gave a brief land acknowledgement, backlit by a facade emitting purple light.
数百人聆听演讲者发表简短的土地声明，背后是散发着紫色光芒的立面。
The crowd skewed male and young.
人群以男性和年轻人为主。
Undercuts and blazers without ties were the dominant style.
底切和不系领带的西装外套是主导风格。
Then the real entertainment began, a deafening “dueling pianos” show that ruled out the possibility of my interviewing anyone.
然后真正的娱乐开始了，一场震耳欲聋的“钢琴决斗”表演，排除了我采访任何人的可能性。
The first song: “Sweet Child O’ Mine.”
第一首歌：《我的甜蜜孩子》。
The concluding party was an awards gala at the Fairmont Royal York hotel, an elegant art deco building a few blocks from the convention center.
闭幕晚会在费尔蒙皇家约克酒店举行，这是一栋优雅的装饰艺术建筑，距会议中心仅几个街区。
Tickets for the affair, which included a three-course meal, were $225 per person, or $2,250 for a table.
此次活动的门票包含三道菜，每人 225 美元，每桌 2,250 美元。
I declined to buy a ticket, but stopped by the hotel anyway.
我拒绝买票，但还是去了酒店。
I got there just as it was getting dark.
天快黑的时候我就到了那里。
Fierce, cold winds blew off Lake Ontario and roared down the skyscraper canyons of downtown Toronto.
猛烈的冷风从安大略湖吹过，沿着多伦多市中心的摩天大楼峡谷呼啸而过。
A small crowd of protestors had congregated outside.
一小群抗议者聚集在外面。
They waved signs, prayed, and tried to pass tea-light candles to the mining officials who pushed past them into the lobby.
他们挥舞牌子，祈祷，并试图将茶蜡烛传递给从他们身边推入大厅的矿业官员。
Attached to the candles were small note cards that described water poisoned by a Canadian gold company in Argentina, land defenders murdered by security forces in Guatemala, and the 2019 dam collapse in Brazil, when a barrier holding back iron-mine waste gave way , releasing a massive toxic slurry that inundated a low-lying village and killed 270 people.
蜡烛上附有一些小卡片，上面描述了阿根廷一家加拿大黄金公司对水造成的毒害、危地马拉安全部队杀害的土地捍卫者以及 2019 年巴西大坝崩塌的情况，当时阻挡铁矿废料的屏障崩塌，释放出大量有毒泥浆，淹没了一个低洼村庄，导致 270 人死亡。
(Top officials from Vale, a Brazilian company with offices in Toronto, face murder charges.)
（在多伦多设有办事处的巴西公司淡水河谷的高级官员面临谋杀指控。）
Most of the protestors were members of Catholic social justice organizations, with connections to communities in the Global South impacted by mining.
大多数抗议者是天主教社会正义组织的成员，与受采矿影响的南半球社区有联系。
They were joined by solidarity organizations tied to the Philippines and Peru.
菲律宾和秘鲁的团结组织也加入了他们的行列。
I talked to one of the protestors, Dean Dettloff, as the event wound down.
活动结束后，我与其中一位抗议者迪安·德特洛夫 (Dean Dettloff) 进行了交谈。
A nearby sign declared “Hands off Africa,” a quote from Pope Francis’s critique of conflict diamonds and the green-metals boom.
附近的一个标牌上写着“放手非洲”，这是弗朗西斯教皇对冲突钻石和绿色金属热潮的批评中的一句话。
“We need to transition to green energy, but at whose expense?” Dettloff said.
“我们需要过渡到绿色能源，但代价是谁？”德特洛夫说道。
“Who is being thrown under the wheels of that transition?
“谁被置于转型的轮子之下？
Those are the people we want to amplify and be in solidarity with.”
这些人是我们想要扩大规模并与之团结一致的人。”
Dettloff and other protestors told me they had tried to have conversations with PDAC attendees.
德特洛夫和其他抗议者告诉我，他们曾尝试与 PDAC 与会者进行对话。
I brought up the industry’s emphasis on addressing climate change over the past few days.
过去几天我提到了业界对应对气候变化的重视。
After all, the world cannot abandon fossil fuels without a good deal more lithium, copper, and many more minerals.
毕竟，如果没有更多的锂、铜和更多矿物，世界就无法放弃化石燃料。
I told him what the McKinsey analyst had said — “to stop global warming, you need us” — a sentiment that, however opportunistic, contains an uneasy truth.
我告诉他麦肯锡分析师所说的话——“为了阻止全球变暖，你需要我们”——这种情绪，无论多么机会主义，都包含着一个令人不安的事实。
Did it suggest a possible area of shared interest with the industry, a possible path to a conversation?
它是否暗示了与行业可能共同感兴趣的领域、可能的对话途径？
“My response to that would be that I need them to stop harming my friends in the Global South,” Dettloff said.
“我对此的回应是，我需要他们停止伤害我在南半球的朋友，”德特洛夫说。
“When we have that conversation first, maybe then we can have another conversation about sustainable minerals.”
“当我们首先进行对话时，也许我们可以就可持续矿物进行另一次对话。”
I thanked the protestors and hurried off to the nearest streetcar, head down against the wind.
我感谢了抗议者，然后低头迎风赶往最近的有轨电车。
The last of the activists packed up their cardboard coffee containers and signs.
最后的活动人士收拾好他们的纸板咖啡容器和标牌。
The lights from the Fairmont Royal York gave off a golden yellow glow.
费尔蒙皇家约克酒店的灯光发出金黄色的光芒。
Inside, the party was going strong.
里面，派对气氛热烈。
Nick Bowlin is a freelance journalist and correspondent for High Country News.
尼克·鲍林 (Nick Bowlin) 是《高地新闻》的自由撰稿人和记者。
This article appears in Issue 10 of The Drift.
本文发表于《The Drift》第 10 期。
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