Min(e)d Your Metals: Inquiries into the Environmental Impact of Extraction
Department
Elementary and Early Childhood Education
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-1-2023
Abstract
When most people think about climate change, the use of fossil fuels such as coal likely comes to mind. However, when it comes to mining, it is not just the product that harms people and the environment but also the process. Mining and extractive practices contribute to climate change, but they also do great harm to people directly and immediately. For example, the extraction of the coltan used in smartphones has led to highly publicized stories about child labor, war, and human rights violations in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DCR). Less publicized examples include enormous damage done to Indigenous nations by the Red Dog zinc mine in Alaska, which according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Toxics Release Inventory, produces roughly 750 million pounds of pollution annually (Nobel 2018; Collins 2019), causing Alaska's staggeringly high levels of environmental toxicity.
Journal Title
Geography Teacher
Journal ISSN
19338341
Volume
20
Issue
1
First Page
23
Last Page
28
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
10.1080/19338341.2022.2117723