Climate Change and Mining (2024)

FAQs

What are the answers to climate change? ›

An energy-intensive supply chain

Those machines run on fossil fuels that release CO₂ and other pollutants, while explosives produce carbon monoxide, which also contributes to global warming. Once extracted, the ore is pulverized – a step that accounts for 40% of mining's energy use.

Mines release harmful substances into the air and water, and can cause serious health issues if inhaled or consumed. Mines also release acidic water, which can kill marine life and make freshwater unsuitable for drinking.

Global temperature is warming, weather patterns are changing, polar ice is melting, and sea level is rising. Climate has changed throughout Earth's long history, but this time it's different. Human activity is causing worldwide temperatures to rise higher and faster than any time we know of in the past.

Accelerating Clean Energy Ambition

While climate change cannot be stopped, it can be slowed. To avoid the worst consequences of climate change, we'll need to reach “net zero” carbon emissions by 2050 or sooner. Net zero means that, on balance, no more carbon is dumped into the atmosphere than is taken out.

Mining can cause erosion, sinkholes, loss of biodiversity, or the contamination of soil, groundwater, and surface water by chemicals emitted from mining processes. These processes also affect the atmosphere through carbon emissions which contributes to climate change.

Abandoned mining operations can leach iron and other chemicals such as copper, lead and mercury into nearby waterbodies. Active mining operations are considered point sources of pollution. But drainage or runoff from abandoned mining operations often adds to nonpoint source pollution.

: the average course or condition of the weather at a place usually over a period of years as exhibited by temperature, wind velocity, and precipitation. a healthful climate. a warm, humid climate. b. : the prevailing set of conditions (as of temperature and humidity) indoors.

While the effects of human activities on Earth's climate to date are irreversible on the timescale of humans alive today, every little bit of avoided future temperature increases results in less warming that would otherwise persist for essentially forever.

How to fix climate change? ›

Fossil fuels – coal, oil and gas – are by far the largest contributor to global climate change, accounting for over 75 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions and nearly 90 per cent of all carbon dioxide emissions. As greenhouse gas emissions blanket the Earth, they trap the sun's heat.

The mining industry generates between 1.9 and 5.1 gigatons of CO₂ equivalent (CO₂e) of GHG emissions annually. The majority of emissions in this sector originate from fugitive coal-bed methane that is released during coal mining (1.5 to 4.6 gigatons), mainly at underground operations.

The energy we need to Live

Whether it be renewables or existing infrastructure, we cannot fly, sail or drive without mining. We also can't move electricity without Copper wiring, so that means no heating, or cooking, or light in our homes, and industry unable to produce the things we need.

Mining is an inherently invasive process that can cause damage to a landscape in an area much larger than the mining site itself. The effects of this damage can continue years after a mine has shut down, including the addition to greenhouse gasses, death of flora and fauna, and erosion of land and habitat.

Because we are already committed to some level of climate change, responding to climate change involves a two-pronged approach: Reducing emissions of and stabilizing the levels of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere (“mitigation”); Adapting to the climate change already in the pipeline (“adaptation”).

Climate is the long-term pattern of weather in a particular area. Weather can change from hour-to-hour, day-to-day, month-to-month or even year-to-year. A region's weather patterns, usually tracked for at least 30 years, are considered its climate. Photograph by Walter Meayers Edwards, National Geographic.