Richard Adkerson on biodiversity vs. electrification
From The War Below: Lithium, Copper & the Global Battle For Power - Ernest Scheyder and Richard Adkerson · · New Orleans Book Festival at Tulane University
“The problem for this company though is that this site is home to a rare flower found nowhere else on the planet. And so if you dig the mine, would you, you know, basically relegate this flower to extinction? Should we care about the flower or should we care about the lithium?”
On , Richard Adkerson, Former Chairman & Chief Executive Officer at Freeport-McMoRan, spoke about biodiversity vs. electrification during The War Below: Lithium, Copper & the Global Battle For Power - Ernest Scheyder and Richard Adkerson on New Orleans Book Festival at Tulane University.
About Richard Adkerson
Richard Adkerson, former chairman and CEO of Freeport-McMoRan, participated in a moderated discussion with journalist Ernest Scheyder in New Orleans on May 1, 2025, about Scheyder's book "The War Below: Lithium, Copper & the Global Battle For Power." During the event, Adkerson discussed the role of copper in the modern economy, stating that "two-thirds of copper goes into generating, transmitting or using electricity" and that electric vehicles contain "three or four times more copper" than conventional cars. He said that Freeport-McMoRan produces "almost 75% of the copper consumed in the United States" and described permitting as a challenge to developing domestic resources. Adkerson also commented on global copper demand, saying that "China changed everything" and that while his company produces more copper than China as a country, China "consumes almost 60% of the world's copper." He acknowledged that "climate change is real" and expressed concern about the effects of increased hurricane frequency and severity. In a separate appearance in Washington, D.C. on May 14, 2018, Adkerson introduced Indonesian Finance Minister Sri Mulyani at a gala dinner hosted by the American Indonesian Chamber of Commerce. He praised Mulyani as a "serious minded capable woman" and noted that her talk at a Women's Forum earlier that day was "inspiring for the women but quite frankly it was very inspiring for men."