Day 10: Ch. 13 Water Resources & Geology and Ch. 14 Nonrenewable Mineral Resources
Water is probably our most important natural resource. Our bodies are 60% water, so obviously obtaining clean usable water for ingestion alone usurps many other non-vital needs in terms of the necessity of a better control over this resource. But we are using the available freshwater unsustainably by waisting it, polluting it, and charging too little for this irreplaceable natural resource. One out of every six people doesn’t have sufficient access to clean water, and this situation will almost certainly get worse. This is why water is a global issue. Being one of the most important resources we have, it’s ironically one of the most poorly managed. Half of the human population don’t have water pumped into their homes. Only about 0.024% of the earth’s freshwater is readily accessible to us as ground water and lakes, rivers, and streams; but what’s even crazier is that that much water is enough to fulfill the health needs of everyone – the problem is that it gets distributed unevenly around the globe for complex geopolitical, economic, and environmental reasons.
The hydrologic cycle is a really cool earth force that continuously collects, purifies, recycles, and distributes water in the seas, air, and land and it’s powered by solar energy and gravity. Groundwater is stored in aquifers deep underground where gravelly rock that functions sort of like a sponge contains the water as it seems into porous ground. So when the ground isn’t porous enough, like in the modern landscape paved over by concrete and buildings galore, the water doesn’t seep but rather gathers in runoff that tends to become dirty. This makes natural recharge of aquifers take a longer amount of time, which can cause water shortages. Since groundwater and surface waters (lakes, rivers, streams) are connected, if we deplete groundwater reserves faster than they can replenish, those lakes, rivers, and streams start to dry up without support from underneath them. We also use a lot of what’s called reliable runoff, or the 1/3 of runoff water that isn’t lost in seasonal floods. But during the last century the human population tripled and global water withdrawals have increased sevenfold, leading us to use up on average 34% of the world’s reliable runoff. 70% of the water we use worldwide goes to irrigating crops and raise livestock (part of the reason why industrial agriculture is so taxing on the environment), 20% of it goes to industrial uses, and the remaining 10% goes to cities and residences. Of course, affluent lifestyles use up way more water, much of it unnecessarily so, as seen in our water footprint. This is the amount of water we use directly and indirectly by looking at our water consumption and stuff we consume that requires a lot of water to make. The average American uses about 260 liters or 69 gallons of water, enough to fill 1.7 bathtubs of water (each containing 151 liters or 40 gallons). We use this mostly on flushing toilets (27%), washing clothes (22%), taking showers (17%), and running faucets (16%) or in leaks (14%). To put this to scale, one tub (40 gallons) is the amount of “virtual water” required to produce and deliver a single cup of coffee; even crazier, a loaf of bread uses 4 tubs, a burger uses 16 tubs, a t-shirt uses 17 tubs, a pair of jeans uses 72 tubs, a car uses 2,600 tubs, and a house uses 16,600 tubs. Groundwater and surface water resources in the United States go mostly to removing heat from electric power plants, irrigation, and industry and raising livestock. In areas where drought is more prominent, like the southwest, irrigation accounts for about 85% of their water use. The United States Geological Survey found that 1/3 of freshwater withdrawn in the U.S. comes from groundwater resources and the other 2/3 comes from rivers, lakes, and reservoirs. It also projected that 36 states are likely to face water shortages by 2013. Many sections of the Colorado River don’t even flow at all.
The main factors that cause water scarcity in any particular area are a dry climate, drought, too many people using a water supply more quickly than it can be replenished, and wasteful use of water. It’s estimated that by 2050 some 60 countries, mostly in Asia with 3/4 of the world’s population, will experience considerable water stress. It’s the rapid urbanization, economic growth, and drought are expected to put strain on the populations in these areas, especially China and India. Currently, 30% of the earth’s land area experiences severe drought, and this could go up to 45% by 2059 as a result of climate change caused by a warmer atmosphere. The best way to increase freshwater supplies is to not waste current water, but other solutions include building dams and reservoirs to store runoff in rivers for release as needed, transporting surface water from one area to another, and desalination.
Most aquifers are renewable resources unless the groundwater they contain becomes contaminated or is removed faster than it is replenished by rainfall, which is what’s occurring in many parts of the world. These aquifers provide the water for half of the earth’s people. To keep up with rising demand, the world’s three largest producers – China, India, and the United States – as well as Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Yemen, Israel, and Pakistan are overpumping many of their aquifers. Overwithdrawal of water resources would appear to be another effect of globalization and the desire of other countries to attain a Western lifestyle. Currently, more than 400 million people are being fed by grain produced through unsustainably withdrawn groundwater (ancient deep aquifers are non-renewable sources of water because they take so long to recharge). Saudi Arabia is a good example of unsustainable water use: it withdraws from ancient deep aquifers, has limited water resources to begin with, it uses water to irrigate cropland in the desert (obviously an uphill battle), and to fill large pools and fountains. Unsurprisingly, Saudi Arabia announced that it would stop producing wheat by 2016 and import grain (also virtual water) to help feed its 30 million people. If the water can’t come from under your own feet, it has to come from somewhere else, which then goes to producing something you need.
In the United States, we’re withdrawing groundwater 4x faster than it’s replenished. The world’s largest aquifer, the Ogallala aquifer, lies under 8 states in the American southwest and is in danger of being dried up. This would not only cause drastic dangers to human health where the water supports people in these areas, but also ecological danger because the aquifer supports springs that nourish wildlife and biodiversity. Overpumping of aquifers limits future food production and increases the gap between the poor and the rich. As water resources dry up, farmers must drill and dig deeper, requiring more energy and capital to buy and run larger pumps. Overpumping and deletion also causes aquifers to collapse, which leads to sinkholes above on the ground. There have been a few large and newsworthy sinkholes in the news recently, and one cannot think that these might have been attributed to water depletion. This land subsidence also destroys the changes of groundwater recharge, and has been occurring in California, Louisiana, Arizona, Florida, Mexico City has sunk in some areas by 10 feet from rapid urbanization, and parts of Beijing, whose water table has fallen 61 meters since 1965. When overpumping occurs in coastal areas, saltwater gets sucked into the aquifer, making it undrinkable and unusable for irrigation. It has been found that some deep aquifers might contain enough water to support billions of people for centuries with better quality than that of lakes and rivers. But, there are four main concerns: they’re nonrenewable and cannot be replenished on a human scale, little is known about the geological end ecological impact of withdrawing water from them, some of them flow beneath more than one country and no treaties exist to regulate rights to them, and the costs of tapping into deep aquifers are unknown, but most likely very high.
Some see the building of more dams as the answer to water problems, but there are some very steep costs. Building dam-and-reservoir systems has greatly increased water supplies ins ome areas, but has also disrupted ecosystems and displaced many people. The main goals of the dam-and-reservoir system are to capture and store runoff, and release it as needed to control floods, generate electricity (hydroelectricity) cheaply, and supply water for irrigation and for towns and cities. They also provide recreational activities like swimming, boating, and fishing. If it’s done in an area with a large influx of water, it can provide a reduction of downstream flooding to cities or farms. There are more than 45,000 large dams in the world now, most of them in China (the popular Three Gorges Dam being was highly controversial during its planning stages). They have increased the amount of annual reliable runoff available for human use by 1/3, as they now hold 3-6x more water than all the water flowing in natural rivers. However, the construction of these dams has displaced 40-80 million people from their traditional homes, flooded land that was used to produce food, and impaired the important ecological services of these lands in the process. Dams create a great displacement of water either side. They swell up the water level behind them, which inundate whatever was there previously, and trickles the flow of the river on the other side, which ends up drying out the ecology and deprives downstream cropland and estuaries of nutrient-rich silt. This is what happened to Colorado River, which is reduced to almost nothing in many spots downstream as much of the water is withdrawn for the desert cities in the American southwest. Lots of sedentary water in one place means a lot of it evaporates. The reservoir behind the dam also typically fills up with sediments like mud and silt within 50 years and makes them useless for storing water or producing electricity. Since dams like this are governmentally funded, they’ve supplied many farmers and ranchers with water at low prices, so these subsidies have led to the inefficient use of irrigation water. Basically, what it comes down to is that we can’t mess with the balances of natural entities and systems without considerable disruption in that system; we can’t hold on to something and expect it to stay in our grasp.
Transferring water from one place to another has greatly increased water supplies in some areas but has also disrupted ecosystems. This is enabled through the use of government subsidies that allow water to be cheaply transferred to places where it’s economically needed. Unfortunately these places are likely to be deserts where we try to grow crops, which is unsustainable as it is. One example is California, where their Water Project looks to transport water from Northern California to Southern California. However, those in the north argue that this depletes their own water resources which are beneficial for cleaning out polluted areas and that must of the water is inefficiently lost in the transfer. They also argue that just 10% better efficiency in water usage in the south would reduce much of their need for freshwater from the north. But even worse is that projected climate change would reduce the amount of High Sierra snowpack ice melt, which is what supplies much of the water in question to begin with, starting a fiercer fight for control of the water. The destruction of the Aral Sea in Central Asia is another example of horrible water management. The two rivers that feed the saline water body were used to withdraw water to desert crops of cotton and rice, which require large amounts of water, and this has caused the Aral Sea to shrivel up to two remaining bits of lakes, causing 26 fish species to go extinct, 85% of the area’s wetlands to dry up, and the loss of work for 600,000 people who rely on the land. The Aral Sea once functioned as a thermal buffer, keeping temperatures cooler in the summer and milder in the winter, but now that it’s a giant salt desert that function is lost. This naturally occurs when the water evaporates and leaves the salt behind. To make matters worse, wind picks up and carries salt and dust to damage neighboring and far away areas, ruining crop land and killing wildlife, even increasing glacial melt in the Himalayas (a perfect example of unexpected connections and unintended consequences). This terribly unsustainable water use has costed the UN and the World Bank $600 million since 1999 to purify drinking water and upgrade irrigation and drainage systems in the area.
This brings on the question: with so much salty water at our disposal, and with freshwater being the precious resource it is, is it worth converting saltwater to freshwater? We can, but the cost is high and the resulting salty brine leftover much be disposed of without harming aquatic or terrestrial ecosystem. The two most widely used ways are desalination (heating water until it evaporates and condenses as freshwater) and reverse osmosis, or microfiltration (using high pressure to force saltwater through a membrane filled with pores small enough to remove the salt). There are about 14,450 desalination plants in the world and they only meet less than 0.3% of the world’s demand for freshwater. Not only is it expensive, but it requires high energy input and chemicals to sterilize the water that in turn kills marine organisms. Finally, you’re left with salty water as a by-product, which can’t be thrown away into the ocean or on land because of the shock the salt would cause the ecosystem.
The bottom line is that we must use water more sustainably. We can do this by cutting water waste, raising water prices, slowing population growth, and protecting aquifers, forests, and other ecosystems that store and release water. About half fo the water withdrawn in the Unites States from surface and groundwater is unnecessarily wasted, and 2/3 of the water used throughout the world is unnecessarily wasted through evaporation, leaks and other losses. But this means that it’s economically and technically feasible to reduce water waste (to 15%) by being more conscious about water usage. This 15% improvement could meet msot of the world’s water needs for the foreseeable future. The first major cause of water waste is that it is so cheap. This is because of government subsidies, and this low cost means that users have little to no incentive to invest in water-saving technology or conserve water supplies. This creates the false mindset that water can never run out, invoking another tragedy of the commons. But if we placed government subsidies on improving the efficiency of water use, we can plan for smarter water, more environmentally beneficial subsidies for more efficient water use. Also, current irrigation methods are very inefficient. Flood irrigation delivers far too much water, plus 40% of it is lost in evaporation, seepage, and runoff. This method is used in 97% of China’s irrigation systems, so one can only imagine the water loss there. Some smart solutions to irrigation water waste is to line canals bringing water to irrigation ditches, irrigate at night to reduce evaporation, monitor soil moisture and ass water on when necessary, grow several crops on each plot of land (polyculture), encourage organic farming, avoid growing water-thirsty crops in arid climates, irrigate with treated wasted water, and import water-intensive crops and meat so as to save otherwise unsustainably used water. These invokes the idea of “living where you live.” If the desired practice is naturally inefficient because of local factors, chances are you would probably benefit from doing something else. The most efficient irrigation method is drip or trickle irrigation, which delivers a stead supply of small amounts of water droplets directly to the roots or soil above the roots of crops, where 90-95% of the water reaches the plant. Unfortunately drip irrigation is only used on 1% of the world’s irrigated land, but with developments and innovations to the cost it should be picked up more and more. Low-tech options like rainwater harvesting is a good way to store fresh, free, rainwater, and can be implemented especially in areas with high rainfall. In southern Australia 40% of households use rainwater stored in tanks as their main source for drinking water. Industries need to be more conservative with their water management, and the promotion of closed-loop recylcing systems can achieve this. More than 95% of the water used to make steel can be recylced. Flushing toilets with water clean enough to drink is the single largest use of domestic water in the Unites States and accounts for a fourth of home water use. Since 1992, U.S. government standards have required that new toilets use no more than 1.6 gallons per flush (this is still twice as much as the daily supply of water per person in some poor arid countries). If you really think about it, we don’t need that much freshwater in our toilets. Personal plumbing fixes can alter how much water goes in, but as a standard we don’t always need to be “going” into a perfectly clean lake. We also need to look into ways to recycle most of our water use, even sewage treatment. We can apply nature’s chemical cycling and use the nutrient-rich sludge from waste-treatment plants and apply it as soil fertilizer, but we would need to ban the discharge of toxic chemicals into sewage treatment. One great, large-scale way we can save our water use is to intensely invest in renewable forms of energy, like solar and wind. A proposed plan to have 20% of our electricity sourced from wind energy would save the country 4 trillion gallons of water by 2030.
We can lessen the threat of flooding by protecting more wetlands and natural vegetation in watersheds, and by not building in areas subject to frequent flooding. Floods are good and have created the world’s most productive farmland by depositing nutrient-rich silt on floodplains, and also by recharging groundwater and refilling wetlands. It really only when we get in way tof naturally occurring systems hat we see a problem with floods. But the human removal of water-absorbing vegetation, especially on hillsides, has led to human-caused increases in flooding. Draining and building on wetlands decreases their natural ability to absorb flood waters, the effects of which were seen in Louisiana with Katrina.
Chapter Question: How can we implement a more personal way of seeing the effects of water conservation and better water management? Shouldn’t we encourage water meter installation, subsidies for composting, and tax breaks for less water use?
The earth has major geological processes and hazards that subject our civilization to change without notice. Dynamic processes move matter within the earth and on its surface, and can cause volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tsunamis, erosion, and landslides. Geology is the science that studies these dynamic processes. Internal geologic processes are generated by heat from the earth’s interior and external geologic processes are driven directly or indirectly by energy from the sun, mostly in the form of flowing water or wind and influenced by gravity that tend to wear down on the surface of the earth and move matter from one place to another. This is kind of a fancy way to describe the processes of weathering. Physical weathering involves wind, water, and temperature changes, whereas chemical weathering involves rainwater or groundwater made acidic by reacting with carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to slowly dissolve rocks, and biological weathering involves lichens that gradually wear down rock into smaller particles.
The inside of the earth is a constantly churning furnace that slowly destroys and rebirths the land we live on. This happens through volcanos and earthquakes, which are inextricably linked due to the motion of the tectonic plates that are in steady slow motion under us. Volcanic eruption release large amounts of lava rock, hot ash, liquid laval and gases, including water vapor, carbon dioxide, and sulphur dioxide into the environment. Some say that naturally occurring activity like this is responsible for much of the climate change we are experiencing, however the amount of greenhouse gases that steadily emitted into the air by anthropogenic causes overshadow that of natural events like eruptions. However, they do cause immense destruction in the area surrounding them and, sometimes, even far from them. Historic geological records show that massive eruptions like that on Santorini hundreds of years ago were known to cause “little ice ages” with a similar greenhouse effect that we’re worried about now. Another natural cause of destruction is earthquakes. These, however, be pack a more versatile punch. When occurring just under stable ground the damage is usually limited to a radius around the epicenter and buildings and structures above ground. This can be bad enough, but when an big enough earthquake happens under the ocean, it can cause a tsunami that only grows in intensity as the waves travel faster and farther eventually breaking over coastland. Most of what we can do is pay attention to the location of where we choose to live and invest in technology like networks of ocean buoys that can alert us when changes in pressure occur in the ocean before the wave hits land.
There are three major types of rocks found in earth’s crust – sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic – that are constantly being recycled very slowly by the processes of erosion, melting, and metamorphism. Sedimentary rock is composed of sediments like dead plant and animal remains and other particles of rock and mineral that make their way down stream from where ever they were were deposited and are squeezed under years of intense weight and pressure to form into rock. One of the most famous examples of sedimentary rock is coal. Igneous rock forms below or on the earth’s surface when magma wells up from the earth’s upper mantle and then cools and hardens. This is like lava rocks or granite. Metamorphic rock forms when preexisting rock is subjected to high temperatures, high pressures, chemically altering fluids, or any combination of these that end up reshaping the rock’s internal crystalline structure, physical properties, and appearance. Marble is a well-known metamorphic rock. The rock cycle is the slowest of earth’s natural cycles, and is defined by the interaction of physical and chemical processes that change rocks from one type to another. The rock cycle is what deposits nutrients and minerals needed for life, so like all the other earth processes, we wouldn’t be here without it.
We can make some minerals in the earth’s crust into useful products, but extracting and using these resources can disturb the land, erode sols, and produce large amounts of solid waste, pollute the air, water, and soil. Such metallic minerals and ores include aluminum, iron, manganese, cobalt, chromium, copper, and gold. Nonmetallic minerals that are widely used are gravel, sand, limestone, and phosphate salts. New technologies are making the extraction of these resources less expensive than before, and therefore more readily accessible. But the mining, processing, use, and disposal of these minerals and resources can have some negative environmental impacts; and often times the harmful impacts can exceed the usefulness of the extraction. Surface mining removes all vegetation from a site to excavate the minerals, then removes the overburden, or soil and rock on top of the minerals. This method is used to extract 90% of nonfuel mineral and rock resources and 60% of the coal used in the United States. Strip mining extracts mineral deposits from horizontal beds in the earth’s surface. Open-pit mining involving digging very large holes with machines to remove metal ores. Mountaintop removal is a very dirty form of surface mining in which the tops of mountains are blown off to reach the minerals and coal inside. This has been popular in the Appalachian mountains and has caused environmental and economic degradation on a large scale that has unfortunately gone unnoticed by popular media. Over 500 mountains in America have had their tops removed, and nearby communities have to deal with polluted and/or dried up waterways, toxic runoff containing mercury and arsenic, and breathing coal dust every day. Methods like these ruin the terrain they leave behind and are often overly susceptible to erosion, chemical weathering, and renders vegetation growth to come back much slower than previously possible. Obviously surface mining destroys vital biodiversity when applied in tropical or temperate forests, or really anywhere it’s done. The pollution done to water is immense, with about 40% of the U.S.’s western watersheds polluted from mining. One horrible side-effect of mining is called acid mine drainage, where rainwater seeps through a mine or a spoils pile and carries sulfuric acid to nearby streams and groundwater. The sulfuric acid forms when anaerobic bacteria act on the iron sulfide minerals in piles of spoils. This and the huge quantities of water used to process the ore that end up containing more sulfuric acid, mercury, and arsenic end up in the runoff and into streams and groundwater, further killing wildlife and biodiversity. As if the toxic destruction isn’t enough and in addition to all the greenhouse gas emitting that’s involved in mining and transporting these minerals, mining companies that extract gold have been known to claim bankruptcy right after finishing a dig so they leave without cleaning up large amounts of cyanide-laden water holding ponds in their wake.
Like everything else, all nonrenewable mineral resources exist in finite amounts. As we get closer to depleting any mineral resource, the environmental impacts of extracting it general become more harmful. The inherent problem in the mining business is that these minerals are distributed unevenly in the earth’s crust, leading to a global socioeconomic game of musical chairs when rare and valuable resources like these are found. This means that once a country has depleted its resources, they must start importing from others, which is what happened to South Korea’s iron and copper. China is rapidly increasing its use of key metals like copper, aluminum, zinc, and lead and consumes twice as much steel as the U.S., Europe, and Japan combined. Since 1950, we’ve depleted our once-rich nonrenewable mineral deposits of iron, lead, and aluminum. The future supply of nonrenewable minerals depends on two factors: the actual or potential supply of the mineral and the rate at which we use it. Though we have never really run out of a mineral, a mineral supply becomes economically depleted when it costs more to find that it’s worth. When this happens we must either recycle of reuse our existing supplies, waste less, use less, find a substitute, or just do without it. Without conservation strategies, our mining, using, and discarding rates cause the production rate to flare up in large quantities but then last for a short time before becoming depleted. With recycling, reusing, and reducing consumption we can increase our reserves by needing to produce less and be able to use them for a longer period of time. It’s more efficient, which is more economic. But raising the price of a scarce mineral resource can lead to an increase in its supply, with harmful environmental side effects. This is because minerals are usually cheaper when their supply exceeds demand. When a supply is thought to be depleted, however, the price would normally rise and then end up encouraging exploration for new sources, stimulate development of better technology, and make it profitable to mine lower-grade ores. However, some countries subsidize the development of their domestic mineral resources to help promote economic growth, which keeps mineral prices artificially low and ends up having the negative effects of increased production and waste. Like most other subsidized materials, the true value of the resource is undermined and reduced in the public’s eye, because “we can always just get more.” But when only one in 1,000 mineral deposit sites identified by geologists are suitable for producing ore, mineral supplies can never really grow; they just dwindle.
A ridiculous example of how twisted big business has become in this country is the U.S. General Mining Law of 1872. It’s an old mining subsidy that allows anyone to buy public land under the claim of having found hard rock minerals and the promise to spend $500 to improve the land for mineral development and then pay the federal government $2.50-5 per acre. Then this land could be leased, built upon, used, or sold for current prices after only taking 1872 prices to acquire. In 1992 the mining law was modified to require mining companies to post bonds to cover 100% of the estimated cleanup costs in case they go bankrupt, but these bonds were not required in the past, so cleaning up these 500,000 abandoned hard rock mining sites will cost U.S. taxpayers $32-72 million. The EPA was ordered by federal court to come up with a new rule in 2009 guaranteeing that the mining companies be responsible for cleaning up their mess, but the companies complain that it takes around $100,000 or more to invest in and develop a site before making any profits and that government-subsidized land costs allow them to provide high-paying jobs, valuable resources to industry, and keep mineral-based products affordable (aka perpetuate the same cycles they’ve been doing behind the ignorant blanket over the public’s eyes. Critics say that mining companies need to stop whining because the money taxpayers give up as subsidies to mining companies offsets the lower prices they pay for these products.
One way to improve mining technology and reduce its environmental impact is to use microorganisms that can break down rock material and extract minerals in a process called in-place, or in-situ, mining. This type of biomining removed desired metals from ores through wells bored into the deposits, leaving the surrounding environment undisturbed. It reduces the air pollution associated with smelting and water pollution from releases of hazardous chemicals such as those resulting from the use of cyanide and mercury in gold mining. The only problem is that microbiological mining is slow, taking decades to obtain the same amount of material that traditional methods would obtain in months of years. But it’s economically feasible and scientists are looking for ways to modify the bacteria to speed up the process. Of course, however, the precautionary principle must be used with any sort of genetic/biological fixes to systematic problems involving pushing a natural cycle outside of its boundaries. In the end, you just can’t get around heavy application of the tried and true reduce, reuse, recycle mantra.
We can try to find substitutes for scarce resources, reduce resource waste, and recycle and reuse minerals. Substitutes are sought after for some materials and can be found in new fiber optic cables that replace copper in wire, but are somewhat impossible for others, like platinum in conductors. Recycling and reusing materials is always a great way to reduce excess pollution. Recycling aluminum cans and scrap aluminum produces 95% less air pollution, 97% less water pollution, and uses 95% less energy than mining and producing more aluminum. Including the harmful environmental cost of mining and processing minerals in the prices of itens would also reduce the acts of constant, mindless mining. Perhaps a more embraceable policy measure would be to increase subsidies for recycling, reuse, and finding substitutes to current scarce mined minerals. Remove subsidies to mining companies and put them on better, more helpful groups and endeavors will help everyone, not the few. In the end, it will be those with good intentions in mind who must benefit and those who only intend on remaining stuck in the same destructive rut we’ve been milling about in. The help must be given to the innovators, and the old stragglers who benefit off everyone’s cost that must dry out.
All in all, the best advice on how to deal with our finite resources of water and earth are to reduce our consumption, reuse whenever possible, and recycle our resources. These steps are relatively easy, cost effective, and the most immediate way we each individual can live more sustainable lives, thereby collectively compounding as a more sustainable society.
Chapter Question: What specific kinds of programs can be subsidized to reverse some of the political backing of dirty mining?
Introduction to Environmental Policy 