I would imagine that few if any of my fellow Kossacks would consider themselves friendly to mining. Understandable, as mining is always considered to be nothing but environmental devastation. But you know what? You will not and cannot have the green energy revolution without mining, and a lot more of it. That is just an irrefutable fact. Just looking at autos, you are going to need lots and lots of copper and lithium and cobalt, among other things (see below).
I am a committed lib (big Bernie fan) but I am also a geologist who works in the mining “space”, so I see both sides of the equation. And yes, another irrefutable fact is that mining is environmentally destructive, inherently so, as it is all about tearing apart rocks and sediments. But it is not the environmental Armageddon that too many believe. Here is an example: have any of you ever been to Salt Lake City? I lived there for 25 years. It is truly one of the most beautiful cities in the nation, and vastly under recognized for that. It butts up immediately to beginning of the Rocky Mountains and has spectacular scenery. Here is an image that is taken right in the middle of the urban area.
Wasatch Front mountains from the middle of Salt Lake City.
But you know what you would see if I panned to the right of that image? One of the world’s largest and deepest open pit copper mines, the Bingham Canyon mine. It has been there for over 120 years in operation the whole time. Its there and no one (in general) is bothered by it. Its part of the background, it is not causing basically anyone any heartburn or tearing of the their hair (as some comments I have read here one would think would be commonplace). And there is even an active gravel pit right in a high value subdivision in Salt Lake.
So, mining can co-exist with humans in high end civilization. But also keep in mind that no one would propose a mine in such an area today: no one would try to put a mine in anywhere near Seattle or Phoenix of Denver or any really populated area. No one is going to put a mine in near your house, and if there is one ten miles away, you will likely not know its there unless you drive by it.
Nor could they or would they be able to mine in all the protected areas, the plethora of Nation Parks, National Monuments, wildlife refuges, wild and scenic rivers, wilderness areas, ACECs, state parks, etc etc etc. The best areas are well protected and off limits to any mining. And the NIMBY’s only succeed in slowing projects and pushing mining into other areas that may not have the same considerable environmental safeguards.
Areas where potential new mines could be developed are in areas that most folks would not find particularly attractive, as seen in this image.
Dry lake bed near Las Vegas, no mining allowed.
That does not mean that these areas do not have other values and those should be respected and considered in any development scenario. But there are always tradeoffs, and in order to avoid environmental apocalypse some areas will have to be mined. Do you risk a moderate degradation of the environment for one species, in order to hopefully save thousands? If not, green energy will not happen and we will continue to put too much carbon the air, leading to real environmental nightmares and attendant societal collapses etc. And recycling won’t do it.
My point here is that you need a lot of stuff dug out of the ground to supply the needs of green energy and that will not be nearly as bad as you may think. So don’t just oppose each and every mine that is proposed.
And here is the case for the necessity of more mining for green energy. These charts show projected demand for lithium and copper that is largely driven by the needs of batteries and electricity transmission and generation.
