Problems with Mineral Production
Even so there are reasons for concern. For one thing, even though the long-
term costs of minerals have declined, there are undervalued and unrecognized
costs in the production process. The more efficient extraction processes use, for
instance, vastly greater amounts of freshwater and energy- commodities that
are generally under riced.Nor does the process include the environmental
devastation caused by open pit mining or pollution from the extraction and
refining process, As the amount of usable metal in metal ore falls, the amount
of rock that must be mined, ground up, and treated per ton of product rises
with rapidly. For example, "as the average grade of copper ore mined in Butte,
montana fell from 30 percent to 0.5 percent the 'tailings' produced per ton