The role of mine waste in global climate change
Associate Professor Anita Parbhakar-Fox, Sustainable Minerals Institute, The University of Queensland
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s 2021 draws to a close, the global community is reflecting on COP26. The overarching theme - reduction of carbon dioxide emissions to slow global climate change. However, one very sobering statement was made by the Secretary-General of the United Nations Antonio Guterres: "enough of brutalising biodiversity, killing ourselves with carbon, treating nature like a toilet, burning and drilling and mining our way deeper". Whilst we can all agree with much of this, the high-level summary interpreted by the media has been ‘no more mining’. Whilst there are obvious links between coal mining and carbon dioxide emissions, the links between metalliferous mining and the low-carbon future are far more complex as we move through this required energy transition.
As a child, I was always terrified by the unescapable doom faced by our solar system. I would torture myself looking at encyclopedia illustrations of our sun running out of hydrogen, entering its red giant phase, and engulfing planet Earth five billion years into the future. Though the time scale was unfathomable, I was distraught thinking humanity would be wiped out. As a teenager, this fascination with the end of time continued, but this time poring over the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) reports. The graphs were compelling, due to industrialisation and societies moving upwards through Rostow's 38
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Stages of Economic Growth, dangerous quantities of greenhouse gases (GHG) were being produced. The result, doom for humanity, but this time on a conceivable timescale. No longer billions of years or even millions, but now centuries or less until utter devastation. Fast-forward 25 years, there has been a great deal of talk about designing industry practices and indeed encouraging consumers to make different choices to reduce our GHG emissions to slow climate change. But ask yourself, how much action has been taken? How much
more is needed? What has really changed since the IPCC started documenting our impacts? Indeed, the Kyoto Protocol, Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement were significant in encouraging countries to set, and commit, to GHG reduction targets and transition towards a lowcarbon future. The requirements for this brave new world, which our governments have arguably been reluctant to embrace, include significant increases in the manufacturing of electrical vehicles and renewable energy technologies. But what does this mean for mining, and more importantly mine waste?
