What effect has mining had on our country?
Historically the search for mineral resources has led people to new frontiers. Many parts of the United States were originally settled by gold seekers who flocked to the sites of reported gold discoveries: North Carolina and Georgia in the 1830s, California and Oregon in the 1850s, Montana in the 1860s, Colorado and Nevada in the 1860s, 1890s, and second decade of the 1900s; South Dakota in the 1870s, Alaska and Nevada in the 1900s. A major rush took place to Nevada and the adjacent states in the 1980s. Many communities came into existence and survived because of mining. It is not surprising that mining commonly leads to economic development. City services become necessary in order to support a mining operation. The inhabitants need schools, hospitals, sports facilities, stores, and transportation. Settlements have also become ghost towns when mining ceased. However, through planning that promotes economic diversity, economic growth can continue even when mining declines. Examples include the cities of Birmingham, San Francisco, Denver, Tucson, Salt Lake City, Reno, and Butte.
Extensive exploration has discovered numerous world-class deposits such as the Bingham copper deposit near Salt Lake City that has been mined on a large scale for over eighty years. Other major discoveries include the Carlin Gold Trend in Nevada. However, the United States, like other countries where mining has had a long history, now finds itself importing increasingly large proportions of many important metals. Between fifty and ninety percent of our tin, nickel, zinc, and tungsten are imported. The former Soviet Union, on the other hand, processes such vast amounts of many of these minerals that it is able to export the excess. With the exception of Japan, all technologically advanced countries have developed diverse mineral resources. The U.S. currently imports most of its strategic mineral resources. These include bauxite, cobalt, manganese, and chromium.
Although mining is an essential industry, its proportional contribution to the U.S. economy is much smaller than it was a decade ago. The nature of the United States economy is changing through the emergence of new industries, whose mineral resource requirements are different from those of traditional industries. One such industry is the manufacture of computers and computer technology. There is, however, an increased reliance on imported metals and some non-metallic mineral resources.
Why is the need for mineral resources so little understood?
The role of minerals in modern society is little understood or appreciated by most people because the identity of minerals is commonly hidden in the finished product. No one questions the identity or importance of air and water. The purchaser of gasoline for an automobile is clearly aware of the need for a petroleum product. |
 |
However, the purchaser of an automobile does not think that he is buying a composite of iron, manganese, chromium, lead, zinc, platinum, copper, aluminum, and many other materials, each essential to some part of the automobile.
The calcium, iron, manganese, zinc, and other essential elements are not seen in the food we eat; nor are the minerals used in the implements, machinery, and fertilizers of modern agriculture visible in the product. The energy industries require 29 different nonfuel mineral commodities in order to harness and deliver the energy on which society depends. Telephone handsets contain 42 different elements. Of about 100 mineral commodities used by society today, essentially all of them are used directly or indirectly by the electronics industries and in the production of computers.
How will the need for mineral resources change in the future?
Mineral requirements will continue to grow, fed by the rapidly growing population and increasing per capita demand, particularly in the developing countries. Even if population growth rates continue to decline, world population will reach 6 billion by 2000. According to United Nations estimates, population could stabilize at around 10.5 billion (about twice the present population) by about 2110. Encouraged and led by the industrialized world, less developed countries are striving to raise their standards of living and to build the infrastructures of industrial societies. To succeed, per capita use of mineral resources must grow.
Annually, worldwide, minerals are used in quantities which range from billions of tons of sand and gravel to only a few thousand pounds of such rare commodities as rhenium. No industrialized country is selfsufficient. The United States imports over 50% of the amount it consumes of more than twenty essential mineral commodities; for several of these, imports are 100% of demand. To find, extract, and process minerals so that they can serve the wide variety of needs is extremely complex and costly in terms of capital, energy, water, and labor. Inevitably all parts of the environment, land, water, and air, are affected.
What are the critical questions related to our growing need for mineral resources and its effect on the environment?
The accelerated use of mineral resources and the effect that has on the environment have posed a number of questions, the answers to which will determine the level of living which can be sustained. How long can we continue to consume mineral resources much more rapidly than they are being concentrated by geological processes? How much, in terms of capital, energy, water, labor, can society afford to pay for its mineral resources? What changes are needed in uses of and attitudes toward these resources?
Sound policy decisions in such diverse areas as the economy, international relations, defense, taxation, land use, and environmental controls, require understanding of minerals, from their geologic distribution through their extraction and use to their final disposition as waste products. The mineral requirements of industrial societies link the interests and needs of nations throughout the world.
|
Copyright © 2006 Arizona Mining Association. All rights reserved.