While driving west on I-70, there are views of beautiful trees, snow-capped mountains, and also piles of orange/yellow rock dispersed through the trees. These orange scars on Colorado’s hillsides are abandoned hard rock mines and the piles of tailings left behind. Tailings are the byproduct of mines that turn an orange hue over time as they are exposed to the elements. Colorado has nearly 23,000 inactive and abandoned mines out of an estimated 150,000 abandoned mines in the United States. These mines not only pose risks for the curious off-trail hiker who could fall into a collapsed mine, but they also pose the greatest threat to Colorado water quality through the perpetual pollution of acid mine drainage
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The prospect of deepsea mining provides a predicament for environmental activists and policymakers globally. It has largely been accepted that a transition from gas to electric vehicles would help decrease the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Despite this fewer than one percent of vehicles on the road today are electric vehicles.
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“It’s like Dr. Seuss down there,” according to Diva Amon, a scientist who studies the marine floor, describing the incredible sea life and geologic formations in an area known as the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ), which may soon be opened to the first-ever deep sea mining of polymetallic nodules.
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The Trump Administration has been quietly eroding anti-corruption initiatives in the natural resources sector. From attacks on…
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