3 July

The Chuquicamata copper mine in Chile has been digging this enormous hole in the ground (more than 1100 metres deep) for the past 103 years. They’ve stopped digging down now and are shifting to underground mining. The world is going to need an enormous amount of copper in the next century, and it’s not clear there’ll be enough. The latest research is looking at the sea floor, which has (it appears) enormous reserves. I’m a fan of mining, in my training as a materials engineer I worked closely with both mining and mineral processing engineers. The only mining I criticise now is coal mining, it will need to be shut down. But we’re going to need mining and miners, a lot MORE than we ever had before. There’s a desperate shortage of expertise in this area too. Farming is much more environmentally damaging than mining, something that is not often said. Australia would be infinitely better off closing a lot more unviable farms, and opening a lot more mines.