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