Editorial

Welcome to the first issue of Volume 129 of Applied Earth Science, and welcome to 2020. A new year is always a time to look forward, and the future certainly appears to be an interesting one for the mining industry and economic geology. Not to dwell on this too much but my last editorial focused on the fact that any meaningful attempt to lower CO₂ emissions will require infrastructure in the form of wind turbines, solar panels, energy storage, and electric and hybrid vehicles. This infrastructure cannot simply be produced out of nothing, or by recycling, but will require the extraction of a large variety of different metals on a scale often significantly above the already historically high levels of metal production the mining industry currently achieves, never mind the increased industrial mineral extraction that will also be needed in this effort. On one hand, this suggests that the mining industry should be at the forefront of the various movements to combat climate change and to move to greener and renewable technology. However, as many of you might have seen, the mining industry has a bit of a reputation problem when it comes to environmental issues; all one needs to do is look at the protests at the recent IMARC conference in Melbourne to see this (e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/29/climate-protesters-clash-with-police-outside-melbourne-mining-conference). This reveals a dichotomy in that the mining industry will be vital to global efforts to combat climate change, yet is also castigated by protests such as these for (among other things) the negative contributions of the mining industry to climate change.

So, how do we address this impasse? One potential route forward is a more open dialog; for example, we can talk at conferences about research into battery metals and the potential contribution to the mining industry to efforts to reduce CO₂ emissions, but these presentations in many ways often only reach those who already know the importance of mining to climate change mitigation. Equally, the general public may accuse mining companies of greenwashing if they only focus on the green credentials of their products rather than addressing environmental and social issues throughout their operations. To be clear, I am not saying that I am on the side of the protestors here; more that we need to be clear about the environmental and social advances that the mining industry has made, but also acknowledge that there is still a long way to go. Equally, environmental, social, and other similar issues are not going to go away, and cannot be simply ignored; these issues are going to be at the forefront of new mining developments and the successful continuation of existing operations for the foreseeable future.

So, what can we do? I am not going to pretend that I have an answer, nor am I going to suggest to those of you out there in the mining industry that I know more about these situations than I do. I am going to suggest that we need to move beyond talking to ourselves; one only has to look at the lack of discussion of economic geology at major multidisciplinary geoscientific conferences (e.g. AGU) outside of a select number of focused sessions to realise that we are not really getting the word out effectively. The same applies on the pre-university education side of things, where one way of potentially increasing undergraduate numbers is by explaining the importance of the mining industry to young people. This should not just emphasise potential careers, or that mining supplies the raw materials that make up the manufactured world around them, but in terms of the simple fact that mining is going to have to be a (big) part of whatever we want to do about climate change, among many other positives that can be associated with the industry. Young (and yes, not so young) people are passionate about this topic; engage them, educate them, and let us bring economic geology back into the environmental discussion, but in a positive rather than negative way.

The last thing I would like to say is that this month marks the end of my first year as editor of Applied Earth Science. I would like to thank the members of the editorial board, the behind the scenes staff at Taylor & Francis, and Marat and Patricia, the two Co-Editors of Applied Earth Science, for making this first year much smoother than it might have otherwise been. Finally, I would also like to thank all of those reviewers listed below who provided one or more reviews for Applied Earth Science during 2019; your service as always is much appreciated. All the best for the New Year.

Thank you to the following who reviewed papers for AES in 2019:

Marat Abzalov

Stephen Carey

Chris Devitry

James Everett

Stephen Grebby

Clayton Grove

Jessica Hamilton

Mark Jessell

Richard Kellett

Dmitry Konopelko

Xiaohui Li

Mark Lindsay

Annamalai Mahizhnan

Roger Marjoribanks

Charlie Moon

Neil Phillips

Walter Pohl

Ron Reid

Benoit-Michel Saumur

Yuefeng Shen

Christine Standing

Julian Vearncombe

Tim Werner

Peter Woods

Feng Yuan