Illustration by Luis Grañena A little over a year ago, Robert M. Friedland, the eccentric founder of Ivanhoe Mines, sat down in his Singapore home to record the keynote address for the Association for Mineral Exploration’s annual roundup, a fixture of the Canadian mining industry calendar. With his top button undone and his sleeves rolled up, the billionaire serial entrepreneur was in a decidedly good mood.  “You’re going to be able to make more money in the next few years than you were able to do in the past,” he told his virtual audience of industry peers. As Friedland meandered through various topics — including how mining isn’t just an “enterprise for old white guys from Canada” anymore and his determination that finding metal deep underground is “better than sex” — he kept circling back to the promise that very good things were in store for the mining industry. The renewable energy transition won’t be achieved, he said, without the critical m