Event Details
OCTOBER FCGS MEETING INFORMATION
DATE: October 15th, 2026
SPEAKER: William X. Chávez, Jr., Minerals Engineering Department, New México School of Mines
TITLE: Mining: The New Green?
TIME: 5:30-6:30 Happy hour and dinner
6:30-7:30 Society business and presentation
7:30pm raffle to raise money for student dinners
LOCATION: Rm. 710, Sitter Family Hall, Fort Lewis College.
COST: $25pp.
RESERVATIONS: FCGS Website
RSVP DEADLINE: Friday, October 9th.
ZOOM LINK: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86776281684?pwd=pt0537RZmhh0Ay4ImPPn21Spoo3XhA.1
ZOOM MEETING ID: 867 7628 1684
ZOOM PASSCODE: 362358
ABSTRACT: Societal push toward less dependence on fossil fuels, and consequent enhanced implementation of “green” technologies, requires greater – not less - reliance on mines to provide metals necessary for realization of society demands. This means that we will require more mining and more mineral resources to satisfy essential technologies.
Review of current utilization of metals to maintain the status quo of standards-of-living shows that consumption of mined metals – recycling adds little to alleviate our metals debt – must increase in order to simply maintain current societal status (well, at least in the U.S…). Not considering the variable reliability in supply chains, an increase in mine production of almost all metals will be necessary on domestic and international bases – and, with this, the environmental costs associated with expanded minerals production and availability.
The countries that provide the bulk of metals that societies consume will change little in the near future, and, importantly, very few countries provide the greater part of essential commodities; not only is this significant, but, furthermore, only a limited number of mines provide the greater quantity of metals – meaning that we depend on very large mines to supply us with the metals we require - and that exploration for, and discovery of, ore deposits demands that we find very large metal repositories.