Why Do We Need Mining?

As society progresses and keeps innovating, mining is a crucial industry that plays a pivotal role in that progress. Everything that we interact with on a daily basis is a result of either the extraction industry or the agricultural industry. Again, if it isn’t grown, its mined.

The following is a list of just a few things that require the mining industry and a couple of commodities associated with each:

Electronics such as phones and tablets (cobalt, lithium, copper), television (gold, tin, silica), streets (aggregate), glass (silica), coffee machine (copper, aluminum), cars (titanium, aluminum), utensils (nickel, iron), refrigerators (copper, aluminum), oven/microwave oven (aluminum, copper), house/workplace (manganese, copper).

We could keep listing the different luxuries that we take for granted on an everyday basis, but I think you get the point. Almost everything that is essential and things that are embellishments are reliant on the mining industry in order to extract the raw materials to manufacture them. Think of mining as the basic building blocks of society as everything we extract or mine from the earths crust is then processed and manufactured to create the world around us.

Without mining, there is no better way to travel other than horses or walking.                 Without mining, there is no better way to communicate other than writing letters with feathers or reeds.            

Without mining, houses would still be mud shacks with no running water or electricity to cook dinner.            

Without mining, the distribution of ideas and knowledge would be slow and limited geographically.

In the shift to clean energy, mining is more crucial than ever. Electric vehicles need a wider array of minerals for their motors and batteries than gas-powered cars. For instance, an electric car uses roughly twice as much copper as a traditional internal combustion engine vehicle. Minerals essential for electric vehicles include graphite, copper, nickel, manganese, cobalt, and lithium. As reported by the USGS, the US is entirely dependent on imports for graphite, about 46% reliant on copper imports, 57% on nickel imports, completely reliant on manganese imports, 67% on cobalt imports, and over 25% reliant on lithium imports. Many of these imports originate from countries like Russia, China, Canada, and Chile, and without new domestic mines, this dependency on foreign nations will increase.

This applies not only to EVs but also to other clean energy technologies like solar panels, wind turbines, and nuclear energy. These technologies depend on minerals such as graphite, rare earth elements, titanium, silver, cobalt, magnesium, uranium, and nickel, all of which the US relies on more than 50% from countries like Russia, China, Canada, Chile, Argentina, and Brazil.

Future technological innovations, including energy-intensive artificial intelligence, virtual reality, 3D printing, aviation and transportation, robotics, and nanotechnologies, all require mining. Minerals like copper, lithium, silica, aluminum, and rare earths will be essential in developing these technologies, propelling humanity towards progress.

Long story short, there is no argument whether we need mining or not in order to progress humanity. Mining was needed back when civilization started, mining is needed now, and mining will be needed in the future.