Yesterday morning a debate article appeared in my Facebook feed, which had the headline “More mines need to be opened in Sweden for the sake of climate” (my translation from the Swedish text). In short, the writer means that Sweden has the geological potential for mining many of the metals and minerals needed for a fossil-free energy production and storage and that recycling of raw materials will not be able to meet the growing demand. Accordingly new mines will need to be opened and for doing this, the process chain from application to approval needs to be shortened. And consequently, we will have to accept environmental impacts.
Using the threat of climate change and the (obviously necessary) transition to a fossil-free technology as an argument for opening new mines and for extracting raw materials is in my view naive and presents only parts of a large conflict of interest. The issue is immensely complex and the way it is handled will have long-lasting societal, political, economic and environmental impacts.
Calling critical metals and minerals for ‘green metals’ is for example already a bad start. The term ‘green’ and the color green signals to me (and probably to most other people) something that is close to nature and environmentally friendly. Something that is positive. To me as a geologist, a green metal is a metal that is colored green because of the chemical substances it is composed of. Most metals are however not green. But, many green minerals exist, such as for example Malachite shown below.
Malachite downloaded from: https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malakit#/media/Fil:Malachite_Kolwezi_Katanga_Congo.jpg
Metals and minerals exist in nature and have been mined and used for hundreds of years. But only some of these are what is now called ‘green’ metals, metals that are employed in the many electronic gadgets or batteries, to name just a few applications. Lithium and vanadium are some of these, as are the rare earth elements. Mining for these elements occurs in different places and in different types of source rocks.
When I googled the term ‘green metals’, a flood of pictures turned up advertising for companies that either recycle metals or exploit metals in mines. Only a few of the sites mention metals that actually have a green color. It seems to me that what is now being sold under the term ‘green metals’ is just an effort by the mining industry to jump on the current bandwagon and to profit from climate change and the transition to new technologies.
What is completely forgotten in this recurrent discourse, and many lacking geological knowledge are making their voices heard in these public debates, is that metals have been formed through various geological processes and are nothing else but an assortment of different chemical substances.
Mining metals means the release of these various chemical elements into nature. Storage of mining waste and processing of mined rocks will therefore inevitably lead to large-scale environmental damage, not to mention the impact on ground water resources. This has been shown over and over again. It is today often forgotten that heaps and mining waste from old mines in many parts of Sweden constantly leak toxic elements into the ground water.
What is also hardly ever mentioned in the current debate of combating climate change, is that mining industries are among the largest emitters of carbon dioxide and contribute directly to climate change. More mines will mean more emissions. It is also rarely mentioned that extraction and processing of metals and minerals contributes to air pollution and health impacts. All this is detailed in the report Global Resources Outlook 2019.
What is also hardly ever mentioned when writers advocate opening new mines is that metals and minerals, which are geological resources, are abundant in parts of the Globe, but are nevertheless not endlessly available. Geological resources do not form within weeks or years, but on long geological time scales. And with geological time scales I mean hundred of thousands and millions of years.
What is also never really said is that the economy of mining depends on the price of the metals in question. If prices go up, then mining is economically viable and mining companies can earn a lot of money. When prices go down, a mining company may go bankrupt and may abandon the mine and leaves the country.
Really sustainable mining, which by the way does not exist anywhere, would mean redefining the whole mining process and adopting really strict environmental laws without any loopholes. This in turn will entail enormous costs for a mining company and accordingly very high raw material prices. And who is willing to pay such high prices?
So why not focus first of all on new technologies that will allow recycling existing mining and electronic waste and on laws that force companies to design manufacturing so that metals and electronic waste can easily be recycled?
Barbara Wohlfarth 
