Mining moves the modern world, but it also causes great environmental damage. It is responsible for extracting various resources, but this extraction brings impacts on the environment and even some disasters. But what if we decided to stop extracting resources from the earth today, altogether?
What's up Engineering Lovers, my name is Igor Felipe and have you ever stopped to think if you can live without mining resources? The extraction of minerals, metals and fuels from the ground is one of humanity's oldest industries . And with the advancement and population growth, development of new technologies and growth of countries, the trend is to increase this extraction even more.
Society is increasingly dependent on the greater variety and greater volumes of extracted substances than ever before. A person living in a developing country uses about 17 tons of raw materials every year. For a person in a developed country, that's 26 tons.
If you think it's a lot, just think about the various packaging we consume, the electronics we use and the fuel we spend every year. And the problem is that extracting new materials continues to be cheaper than reusing or recycling many substances, leading some experts to warn of increasing pressure from mines on the natural world. This raises concern if the environmental cost of mine pollution and loss of biodiversity, as well as the social impacts caused to local communities, can sometimes outweigh the benefits of mining.
But what if we totally stop the extraction of fossil fuels and minerals as many environmentalists out there preach? What if, to better protect the environment, humanity decided to stop extracting resources? It's an unlikely scenario, for sure, and one that would cause difficulties for many people, especially if it happened suddenly.
But imagining a world without resource extraction allows us to examine how dependent we have become on this continuous extraction. It also invites us to consider the ease with which we often throw these materials away and to examine the neglected potential of these wastes as a source of new materials. So can considering the end of mining help change the way we use materials today?
Well, if we add up the area of all the mines on the planet, they would be equivalent to an area of a small country, and that's just with the mines that are visible. Mining plants cover about 100 thousand square kilometers. An area larger than Austria for example, not counting the underground mines.
But imagining this scenario, the immediate impact would be unemployment. Worldwide, the end of mining would eliminate around four million formal jobs in the industry, not to mention the indirect jobs related to the activity. Not to mention that entire communities or even cities could, overnight, cease to exist.
Think, for example, of mine closures in cities in Australia. In rural areas, where mining operations may have been going on for decades, you have communities that have come to rely solely on it. In a world without mining, ghost towns would be created almost overnight.
But you don't have to go far, just think about the city of Brumadinho where a dam disaster occurred. With the accident, this ended up closing the mine's operations, and consequently caused and still causes a social impact on the population that lived near the mine, as they depended and worked in it. Even the municipality's tax collection had an impact because much of the money collected came from the mineral process.
Another impact would be on energy Today, about 35% of the world still depends on coal to generate electricity, which would lead some countries to a sudden energy crisis. However, the use of coal for electricity generation is not the same all over the world. For example, it is used by 15% in Europe, 63% in China and 84% in South Africa, so in some places we would have a much bigger impact than in others.
Another important impact to consider is the impact on construction. Stocks of sand and gravel, which are essential ingredients for making concrete, are relatively shallow. Sand and gravel are the most massively extracted solid materials in the world.
We extract far more sand than anything else in the world. The UN estimates that we extract around 40 to 50 billion tons of sand a year. And without sand extraction, the impact on the construction industry is unimaginable.
There is even the ability to recycle used concrete, and we have here on the channel a video that talks about this subject that you can check out at the end of the video, but the rate at which we use fresh concrete far exceeds the current rates of recycling of concrete . also quality concerns. Most recycled concrete is 'reduced' for lower quality uses such as road construction.
So while there was a race to implement better recycling processes, in the short term, the construction industry would be seriously impacted. And we still have the issue of natural gas, which is used in many European countries to heat homes. In economies that rely on gas-fired power plants for electricity, such as the United Arab Emirates, Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom, blackouts would become more frequent.
Not to mention the lack of plastics in the world, as the raw material comes from petroleum derivatives. The production of gasoline, diesel, plastics and road asphalt would come to an end. And with them, the era of fossil fuels Most countries have mines of something.
China, Australia and the United States are the global leaders in raw material production value, but extraction represents a much larger share of the economy for some other nations. In at least 18 countries, metallic minerals and coal represent more than half of all exports and for some of them, it can reach 80%. In a scenario without metals mining, all the economies of countries like Suriname with its industrial gold mining, the Democratic Republic of Congo, where cobalt is king, and Mongolia, which is one of the main copper exporters, would be in risk.
A good example of our increasing dependence on a wide range of metals is the common cell phone. In the 1980s, a cell phone needed 20 or more different elements. A new smartphone today needs more than twice as much.
Modern life is totally dependent on minerals and metals. Think about how much metal is in the smartphone, tablet, computer or television you are using to watch this video. Without these metals, there is no way to produce more equipment.
We also have an impact on the global food supply It is estimated that 50% of global food production depends on synthetic fertilizers, made up of varied formulas of phosphorus, potassium and natural gas. Without these elements, it would be almost impossible to maintain large-scale plantations for food production. In other words, this would also have an impact on agriculture and consequently on hunger in the world.
Renewable energies, however, would benefit the most. Nations with the highest generation of renewable energy per person would be at a huge advantage. Iceland and Norway, which get almost all of their energy from hydroelectric and geothermal sources, would be among the nations best equipped to weather the socio-economic storm of a shutdown of mineral extraction.
But despite huge demand for new renewables, wind and solar deployment rates would decline. The paradox of renewable energies is that, in their current form, they need unprecedented volumes of non-renewable extracted materials. Just think that they produce renewable energy, but they consume non- renewable materials to build wind farms and photovoltaic panels.
Increasing renewables, while meaning less fossil fuels from the ground, means big increases in consumption in battery metals such as cobalt and nickel. Solar panels require large amounts of silicon for the semiconductors in their cells. Wind turbines need rare earth metals such as neodymium for powerful magnets that generate electricity as the blades turn.
Well, the idea of this video might be a little alarmist to some extent, showing a catastrophic scenario if we stop extracting resources from one moment to the next, something that is statistically unlikely to happen. But that doesn't mean a transition isn't necessary. We must rethink energy consumption in a no-mining scenario, as well as a careful environmental policy.
Mining is not going anywhere anytime soon, in fact, experts predict a further rise in metals and aggregates mining in the coming decades. With the exception of a handful of elements such as lead and tin, extraction of all metals is increasing. Which justifies more concern, as perhaps mining will likely create more impacts on the land.
Mining the materials needed for renewable energy will increase threats to biodiversity. Without careful planning, these new threats may outweigh those avoided by climate change mitigation. Perhaps, over time, the concept of environmental footprints of materials, as an addition to carbon footprints, will make governments increasingly realize the care we need to take with all our non-renewable resources.
Products must be designed to last longer or so that they can be more easily disassembled and components returned to the system. That would be a turning point for the tech industry. There may also be the development of new biomaterials that can imitate or replace the role of metals.
Now imagine your life today without mining, can you imagine the impact it would have on your life? I'll leave two videos here that you might like too, so click on one of them to check it out. Don't forget to like the video, subscribe to the channel and take the opportunity to share the video on your social networks.
That's it my friends, a big hug, and see you in the next video.
