SUSTAINABLE MINERAL PRODUCTION


•Former underground limestone and salt mines are being used for records and other types of storage facilities.


•A large area of former smelter tailings in Colorado Springs, Colorado is being covered by new homes.


•Part of a former coal mine in western Colorado is now a mushroom farm.


•Aspen Skiing Company and Holy Cross Energy recently developed a methane-powered electric gen- eration plant to capture the released methane from nearby gassy coal mines (https://www.aspentimes. com/news/how-aspen-skiing-co-became-a-power- company/). Methane is a potent greenhouse gas and


its conversion to water and CO2 is an environmentally desirable outcome.


Conclusion Providing a continued supply of the natural resources that society continues to need requires recognition that individual natural resource deposits are depletable and limited in extent. Determining the extractable dimensions of a particular deposit depends on balancing resource recovery with the various capi- tal and operating costs of exploring for, finding, and then build- ing the extractive operation. This includes the costs associated with reducing the environmental impacts and obtaining the required social license to operate. As Schendler (2009, p. 238- 239) points out, “The bottom line is that this [sustainability] job isn’t about the beauty, it’s about the mess. It’s not about the glory, it’s about the dogged pursuit of an enormously chal- lenging goal. This book [Getting green done: hard truths from the front lines of the sustainability revolution] is testimony to the fact that the sustainable business movement isn’t gliding along rails. We’re slogging through the mud, struggling with difficult problems that have complex answers. There’s contra- diction in the very fact of our existence, and uncertainty as to the outcome of our work. I am constantly asked: ‘Climate change is big these days. But what’s next?’ My latest response has been, ‘Honesty.’ The point is that unless we own up to the realities, we’re deluding ourselves, we’ll never be able to get down to solving the real problems.”


The ninth geoethics value statement, Ensuring sustainabil- ity of economic and social activities in order to assure future gen- erations’ supply of energy and other natural resources, should be changed to a more forthright and transparent statement. A suggested change is, Assuring supplies of natural resources for future generations requires recognition that individual natural resources deposits are depletable and that their identification, delineation, extraction, and processing have social and envi- ronmental consequences whose mitigation must be balanced with maximizing the recovery of the valuable minerals needed by society from each deposit. The term “energy” is deleted from the statement because oil and gas, coal, and uranium are adequately covered by “natural resources.”


References


Abbott, D.M., Jr., 2017, The mineral baby: iconic graphic continues to tell important story: Mining Engineering, July 2017, p. 41-48.


Agricola, Georgius, 1556, De re metallica, trans. H.C. Hoover and L.H. Hoover, 1909: Dover Publications, 1910, 638 p.; still in print.


Arvanitidis, N., Boon, J., Nurmi, P., and Di Capua, G., 2017, White Paper on Responsible Mining. IAPG—International


www.aipg.org Oct.Nov.Dec 2020 • TPG 25


Association for Promoting Geoethics, http://www.geoethics. org/wp-responsible-mining.


Bilham, Nic, and Di Capua, Guiseppe, 2020, IAPG Foreward in Boon, Jan, Relationships and the course of social events during mineral exploration: an applied sociology approach. SpringerBriefs in Geoethics, p. v.


Bohle, Martin, and DiCapua, Giuseppe, 2019, Setting the scene in Bohle, M., ed., Exploring geoethics: ethical implications, social contexts, and professional obligations of the geosci- ences: Palgrave Pivot, Cham, XIV + 214, ISBN 978-3-030- 12009-2, p. 1–24.


Boon, Jan, 2020, Relationships and the course of social events during mineral exploration: an applied sociology approach. SpringerBriefs in Geoethics, 141 p.


Burgess-Limerick, Robin, 2020, Human-systems integration for safe implementation of automation in mining: Mining Engineering, Feb. ′20, p. 22-30.


Di Capua, G., Peppoloni, S., and Bobrowsky, P.T., 2017, The Cape Town Statement on Geoethics: Annals of Geophysics, Vol. 60, Fast Track 7, doi: 10.4401/ag-7553.


Doyle, Keiran, 2019, Responsible investing in natural resourc- es: https://blog.geolsoc.org.uk/2019/11/28/responsible- investing-in-natural-resources/selfie/#main, 6 p., posted 28 Nov 2019.


Grennan, Eamonn F., and Clifford, John A., 2017, Resource sustainability—geology is the solution: European Geologist Journal 44–Geology and a sustainable future, p. 28-31.


JORC Code, 2012, The Australasian code for reporting of exploration results, mineral resources, and ore reserves: www.jorc.org, accessed 01/10/20, 45 p.


Minerals Education Coalition, 2019, Mineral baby: https:// mineralseducationcoalition.org/mining-mineral-statistics. This figure may be freely reproduced as long as the copyright and source information are included.


Oreskes, Naomi, and Conway, Erik M., 2010, Merchants of doubt: how a handful of scientists obscured the truth on issues from tobacco smoke to global warming: New York, Bloomsbury, Kindle Edition, 275 p.


Schendler, Auden, 2009, Getting green done: hard truths from the frontlines of sustainability revolution: New York, Gildan Media, LLC, 292 p.


Society for Mining, Metallurgy, and Exploration, 2017, SME guide for reporting exploration information, min- eral resources, and mineral reserves: https://www. smenet.org/SME/media/Publications-Resources/ SMEGuideReporting_082017.pdf.


UN Brundtland Commission, 1987, Our Common Future: Oxford University Press, 400 p.


Wessel, Gregory R, 2016, Beyond sustainability: a restor- ative approach for


the mineral


Society of America Special Paper 520, pp. 17-21, Doi: 10.1130/2016.2520(03).


Wood, Dan, 2018, Transforming the business of gold explora- tion: adapting to deeper exploration: SEG Newsletter, no. 112, p. 10, 10–14.


——— and Hedenquist, Jeffrey, 2019, Mineral exploration: discovering and defining ore deposits: SEG Newsletter, no. 116, p. 1, 11–22.


industry: Geological


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