Global warming will generate more heat than enlightenment. Sandra O’Malley, Diplomatic Correspondent (whatever that is) reports that the upcoming Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation nations meeting in Perth will:
- Examine ways to encourage miners to be cleaner and greener.
- Discuss how to make the resources industry—producing the fossil fuels warming the globe—more sustainable.
- Seek to guarantee miners a place in the sun going forward on the issue of global warming.
We award the benefit of doubt to the conference attendees and await with interest their conclusions on how mines and miners can operate to reduce global warming, be sustainable, and guarantee themselves a place in the sun. Here are some ideas they may consider:
- Implement technologies that reduce water consumption
- Install equipment to reduce gas emissions
- Sequest carbon dioxide in the tailings impoundment
- Build windmills to provide power to the mine
- Stop mining coal and start mining uranium
- Desist going to conferences in far-flung locations to which you have to travel by plane—try video conferencing.
If you have more ideas and suggestions, please pass them on and I will list them all. After all if global warming is the result of human activities, we will all have to do things in ways that now seem foreign and unpalatable. And if global warming is not the result of our activities, you will still save money implementing the suggestions above. And please let me know what transpires in Perth.
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February 7, 2007 at 7:01 pm
Marco A. Murillo
APEGBC’s president Timothy Smith called all members of the association and those working in the field of engineering and geo-sciences to keep public safety and public benefit as the first mandate when providing professional services. Take the above mentioned ideas to consider and add them to a socially minded spirit like the one Timothy has and create the stage for a reduction in the stress, either if its environmental or human.
February 9, 2007 at 1:54 am
Jack Caldwell
A coment from Australi that arrived by e-mail: it is an election year for Federal government this year and the opposition has targeted environmental issues and the “slack” attitude of the current government to global warming as a major election issue. This seems to be gaining momentum and this is reflected in the polls while the Howard government are suffering from foot-in-mouth disease and continually playing catch-up. Of course, one has to bear in mind that the opposition (labour as opposed to liberal) are the ones who introduced the “three uranium mines” rule ie Australia is only allowed to have three uranium mines. This is just great when the spot price of uranium is at US$75/lb up from $7/lb just four years ago. And of course the labour party (which governs all of the states and territories at state level) won’t have a bar of nuclear power. So, if you can believe it, there is not one nuke in Australia! Instead labour want renewable energy. Great, let’s envelop every km of windy coast line in ugly wind farms – and don’t worry about the birds, they’ll learn to fly higher in time – through natural selection, of course!
February 9, 2007 at 4:39 am
Dan Oancea
Well, it seems to me that it’s not the miners who put nasty toxines in the fish, or PCB in the fat tissue of the polar bears, or…
Hey, it’s not 70s anymore; you cannot blame the mining industry or the nuclear plants for everything.
YOU are responsible, too. Even if you’re not a miner! Even if you’re just a regular city dweller.