Australia’s critical minerals list isn’t a particularly thrilling read, but it’s an important one. Put together by the Australian Government, it features 26 commodities — from lithium and cobalt to helium and rare earths — deemed essential for modern technologies, economies, and national security.

They play starring roles in mobile phones, computers, fibre optics, semiconductors, and banknotes, plus numberless other products spanning defence, aerospace, telecommunications, health care, and — of course — green energy.

Indeed, to work in the critical minerals sector is to work at some sort of cutting edge. It is to be a champion of the preservation of Life As We Know It; it is to be faced with a heavy challenge, but a worthy one nonetheless.

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