Six people are dead and more than 20 missing following the Samarco mine disaster in Brazil. But in the rush to blame we must consider the complexity of such failures.
Considerations of the moral case for coal must do far more than consider whether cheap fossil energy will lift people out of poverty. It must consider the pollution and harm to nature that come with it.
The Academy says it will withdraw “millions of dollars” from investments in environmentally sensitive activities, primarily in energy and mining companies.
The bubbles generated by Laureate Professor Graeme Jameson have been worth over $36 billion to the Australian economy. He has just received the 2015 Prime Minister’s Prize for Innovation.
Mining waste rock from historic mines or even treated sewage to find useful metals and minerals could be a sustainable way to meet demand for these finite resources.
As the Australian Government pushes ahead with its Northern Development agenda “making it easier to use natural assets”, it’s important to ask how this may affect the Indigenous peoples in whose territories development will occur.
The dramatic wastewater spill in the Animas River is past its critical phase, but given the long history of untreated mine waste, there will surely be more like it.
A politician invites coal industry representatives to a celebration of their work at the New South Wales Parliament. The purpose? To push the message that coal is absolutely essential to our economy and wellbeing.
If we’re going to mine asteroids, then we need an international treaty to prevent it becoming a wild west. Thankfully we can look to Antarctica to see how such a treaty might work.
Huge investments have been made to develop Africa’s extractive industry. The challenge now is to forge collaboration between the industry and institutions of higher education to build a skills base.