Public opinion, the climate transition, and critical materials: do we have time to wait?

Our society has undergone profound changes in the past. But this time truly is different – and we need to start running ahead of what feels comfortable.

The most recent British Social Attitudes survey is just out, and it makes fascinating, heartening reading. Led by the venerable Sir John Curtice, the 2023 edition tracks 40 years of changing culture and public opinion in the UK, and the headline is that we live in a country transformed. Social attitudes in particular – around identity, sexuality, race, and gender – have become far more liberal. It’s not completely uniform (economic attitudes vacillate; trans issues are deteriorating), but it broadly feels like a one-way secular shift in values since mid-century.

For example, in 1983 three-quarters of respondents said that ironing was women’s work. Today, that figure is down to one in six. Half said same-sex relationships were ‘always wrong’ forty years ago, whilst fewer than one in ten would say so today. In the Conclusion, the authors write:

One way of capturing the picture painted in this report is to imagine what might happen if Dr Who’s time machine were to transport a ‘typical’ British citizen from 1983 into the Britain of today. What would their reaction be? In truth, many of the attitudes that they would hear expressed would be decidedly unfamiliar…our citizen would find their 1980s moral and cultural compass of limited value – and perhaps wonder whether it will ever be of much use again.??????

The climate parallel

Reading the report, I couldn’t help but make comparisons with the climate conversation. In particular, the BSA survey is a testament to human’s capacity to change their minds profoundly over time, and for that organic shift to embed itself across a culture. It is surely a cheering read for anyone working to shift attitudes to climate and the environment today. Indeed, we might borrow their time-travelling thought experiment for ourselves. What would the average person think if we took them forty years into the future, to a world which has met the climate challenge? They too, surely, would find themselves strangers in a new world. A sustainable future would be so transformed that they would find their own early-21st century compass of little value.

However, the climate effort has one critical point of difference when compared to the social justice struggles, and that is its relationship to time itself. For those people who suffered through the long wait for sexual equality, for example – were imprisoned and assaulted, ostracised and discriminated against – waiting for social attitudes to wend their organic way towards justice entailed very real harm. But today (for all that we remain a way from true equality) a young person is able to claim the benefits of that slow process in full. And there is an argument that transformations are most effective when they play out at their own pace.

By contrast, the defining feature of climate change is that time is not on our side. To minimise the destruction of further heating and avoid catastrophic tipping points, we simply cannot afford to wait for social attitudes to organically shift towards sustainability. Anyone who has seen the necessary decarbonisation curves knows that. This is particularly true because we are trying to affect a revolution not only in people’s heads (though that is critical) but also in physical infrastructure. Literally building a new world takes a long time, and lags are real. Government and far-sighted business needs to step in and build it before they are ready to come. Our climate efforts cannot be simply responsive – they must be visionary.

Where is the supply?

So thank goodness I had the conversation with Abel Martins Alexandre on the Conversation on Climate podcast . Abel has spent his long, successful career at the heart of one important aspect of the climate timing puzzle: the world of commodity financing. After a decade at Natixis and fifteen years at Rio Tinto, he is now deep in the ESG world at Lloyds. Our chat reinforced the importance of facing the inconvenient truth around our clean infrastructure challenge: are we going to be able to get the minerals we need in time?

Firstly, Abel makes no bones about the scale of the supply challenge ahead. To hit net zero, we need to double copper supply by 2040. We need three times the cobalt, and four times the nickel, and on and on. All these solar panels, batteries, and grids require physical inputs. Unfortunately, supply is not (yet) scaling up with this expected demand. The mining sector is way behind where we need it to be for long-term investment.? What is going on?

There are many fascinating issues at play here. Firstly, investment cycles in the industry are long. As much as economists like to trumpet the value of competition, and business likes to talk about exciting start-ups bringing innovative disruption, the truth in the mining world is that only a few mega-companies have the skills, experience, and scale to bring incredibly complex projects to life. So we are dependent on a very narrow base; and that is without getting into the geopolitics of where these deposits are, who gets to develop them, and who they decide to sell to.

Secondly, we live on a finite planet – and whatever you think about the degrowth debate, geologists deal in black and white. It is a fact that ore grade quality has been in decline for decades, which means that it is increasingly more difficult and more expensive to extract lower-quality metals than it was in the past. The risk of critical minerals drying up – either in terms of physical reality, economic extraction, or geopolitical access – is so real that both the US and EU keep critical minerals lists as a matter of national security .

Thirdly, there is an increasing tension between different sustainability imperatives. To meet the hastening deadline for decarbonisation, we have to rapidly increase our mineral supplies immediately. However, we must also make sure that the process of extraction itself is as sustainable as possible. The mining sector has historically been shockingly dirty and destructive. Abel believes that those working in the sector are sincere in wanting to clean up their act, but that only slows down the pace at which new projects can come online. Environmental surveying, community consultation, mitigation, and repair all take up serious time. And as ore quality and availability declines, companies are pushed into more difficult – and potentially much more environmentally delicate – places to find materials. I can only pray we don’t end up digging up the seabed, for example.?

The problem of asynchronous cycles

Finally, there are the vagaries of economic time to consider, alongside geological and atmospheric time. In short, the vulnerability of the mining sector to supercycles means that we may be undone by the random accidents of the past. This was a point Abel made clearly: today’s underinvestment is a hangover from the very painful deleveraging of the industry after the last commodities bubble burst post-2008. This made shareholders exert much more capital discipline, tightening investment and focussing on value and returns instead. It’s entirely rational in terms of that market’s internal cycle; but disastrous for the planet because that internal capital cycle is not in rhythm with the greater decarbonisation cycle.

And so we are in a strange limbo. We know we will need a huge increase in supply to meet future demand, but we must act in advance of that demand because of the long lead-times and complexities involved. However, the market itself isn’t making the investment because it is still fighting the last war.

?When they do catch up, the need to make mining itself more sustainable will only slow things down further. This isn’t a discussion about means and ends. Trashing the earth to save the earth makes about as much sense as it sounds. And this isn’t something we can fudge later; there is no negative technology for not building infrastructure fast enough. That would, literally, require Doctor Who’s time machine. So part of this has to be about shifting demand not only from fossils to renewables but simply to a lower total demand on the earth. And mining, with its objective recognition of declining ore grades and net energy, may help the degrowth discussion find its footing.

Some people are more naturally slow-and-steady by nature, and that is right and valuable. And cultural change is most stable when it is organic. But the mining sector is a great example of the perils of waiting around and following natural cycles. Instead, climate might be an issue where we need to respect the work of activists and radicals in pushing the conversation faster than feels comfortable, because we simply can’t afford to wait.

#londonbusinessschool #climatetransition #renewables #sustainability #socialchange #SustainableDevelopment #climateconversations

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