How Ending Mining Would Change the World

April 14, 2022 – There is a pretty fascinating article from the BBC that asks the question, what if we stopped extraction of fossil fuels and minerals entirely? What if, in order to better protect the environment, humanity decided the contents of the Earth’s crust were off limits? It’s an unlikely scenario, to be sure, and one that would cause hardship for many people – particularly if it happened suddenly. But imagining a world without access to the underground allows us to examine how dependent we have become on this ongoing extraction. It also invites us to consider the frivolousness with which we often use then throw these materials away, and to examine the overlooked potential in this waste as a source of new materials. One of the article’s conclusions? Mining is not going anywhere anytime soon: in fact, experts predict a new surge in metals and aggregate mining over the coming decades.