Chris Dunn and Morgan Bazilian of the Payne Institute for Public Policy authored this opinion piece about the issues in tension at the nexus of critical minerals, environment and the climate.

U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland and members of Colorado’s congressional delegation announced the construction of a state-of-the-art facility for the United States Geological Survey on the Colorado School of Mines campus.

Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland helped make the official announcement on Friday at the Colorado School of Mines campus in Golden

Jordy Lee manages the supply chain transparency initiative at the Colorado School of Mines. He says over the past several decades, the U.S. has essentially outsourced mining, largely because of environmental concerns.

Globally, industries will have to raise carbon-capture capacity by a factor of 50 to 100 times over what is in the development pipeline to achieve what the International Energy Agency estimates is needed to reach “net-zero” carbon emissions by 2070 ....

"The renewable energy transition is not going to happen without the mining industry. That's just a fact,” said Jordy Lee, who manages the Supply Chain Transparency Initiative at the Colorado School of Mines.

"These are man-made chemicals. As I always say, since nature did not make them, nature does not know how to break them," said Shubham Vyas, Associate Professor of Chemistry at the Colorado School of Mines.

Such fires can be ignited by lightning, humans and even spontaneously at temperatures as low as 86 degrees Fahrenheit (30 degrees Celsius), said Jurgen Brune, a Colorado School of Mines engineering professor.

All mine workings eventually subside, although it can be an extremely slow process — sometimes taking centuries, said Colorado School of Mines Professor Jurgen Brune, who teaches mine engineering.