Many of the 30,000 attendees of the March 2024 Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada convention harbour a “wild desire” to extract the mineral riches of Canada’s $67 billion Ring of Fire, in the words of Johnny Cash’s well-known song of the same name.
While some might be attracted by the desire to make money, others could be driven by concern for our planet and the belief that the region’s minerals can help reduce carbon emissions and support a just energy transition. As some Indigenous groups have pointed out, however, the construction of roads and mining in the Ring of Fire represents a significant disruption to traditional ways of life and fragile ecosystems.