COPPER PRODUCTION TECHNOLOGY — A HISTORY OF OBSTACLES OVERCOME AND HUMAN NEEDS MET

The specter of mineral resource scarcity has been repeatedly raised because growing population, with a seemingly insatiable appetite for minerals, places expanding demands against a finite resource endowment. This presentation reviews how technology has helped the copper industry to respond to such challenges.

In spite of heightened consumer demand, and increased technical production challenges, the copper industry has historically been able to continually expand production and lower costs. For the years 1900–98, copper production increased 2,465 percent, and copper prices (on a constant-dollar basis) decreased 75 percent. Technological advances have permitted the industry to make copper available from low-grade deposits.

Technology represents ways that humans apply human ingenuity, knowledge, and experience to organize capital, energy, and materials to get what they want and need. It is the means to make things useful, to acquire things that are already useful, or to transform things that are not useful into things that are.