http://www.psmag.com/environment/the-new-bronze-age-entering-the-era-of-tough-ore-60868/
Brand-new copper mines, both open pits and underground, are also proliferating, in places that not long ago would have been unthinkable—too remote, too politically unstable. Even a partial list reads like an adventurer’s itinerary: Aynak, Afghanistan; Schaft Creek, British Columbia; Las Bambas, Peru; Junin, Ecuador; Kamoa, Democratic Republic of the Congo. In the United States, planning is under way for Resolution, a mine 7,000 feet beneath Arizona, and for Pebble, likely a combination pit and underground mine, in Alaska. Each of these is a potential world-class operation, producing copper on the Bingham Canyon scale. Scores of smaller mines are under construction, too.