Our world sees the future. Alternative fuels. Cleaner energy. Cheaper energy. Lower Carbon Footprints. But there is a great divide between today and tomorrow. From today when we are shuttering mines and trying to convert miners into coders. To tomorrow when there are adequate technologies to rely on green energy.

Tragically, we are abandoning more than mines and casting aside communities of dedicated, trained workers. We are forgetting commerce systems: retail services and suppliers, rail, road, and water transportation, and families. We are ignoring the harm that comes from walking away from mine reclamation only half conceived.

Refining, processing and smelting of minerals and the associated manufacturing has also been impacted by offshoring of downstream processes or industrial decline due to a lack of innovation or adaption. The climate has also been a consequence of this trend with major global industry being powered by high carbon non-sustainable sources.