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STS Research Cluster and Sociology Seminar: Mining Futures: Prospecting Critical Metals in the U.S. and Beyond



Event Date 24 Jan 2019 (Thu), 11:00 AM - 01:00 PM
Venue Staff Lounge (HSS-02-36)
Organiser CoHASS (STS Research Cluster and Sociology)-NISTH (Email : ad-hass-research@ntu.edu.sg )


Event Info

Mining Futures: Prospecting Critical Metals in the U.S. and Beyond

Professor Roopali Phadke, Macalester College

Abstract

The global conversation about mitigating climate change is now driven by an almost singular focus on deep decarbonization, or the electrification of everything. Many imagine our future lives as powered by stored electricity, derived from renewable sources. The grand challenges of the Anthropocene includes balancing our global dream to electrify everything with the brutal fact that clean energy technologies depend on metals mined using nearly medieval techniques.  This presentation explores the future of mining for critical metals or “green tech metals” in a Trumpian U.S., in the context of a growing trade war with China. It also examines the global emergence of urban mining as an alternative to open pit and underground mining.  Urban mining is defined as the recycling of materials from the technosphere: the buildings, industrial facilities, and consumer devices that make up our lives.  Urban mining constitutes an emergent epistemology. It is distinct from “virgin” mining in terms of the infrastructures, institutions, and instruments employed.  Urban mining also constitutes a form of disruptive innovation that shifts patterns of consumption and waste collection.

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Roopali Phadke is a Professor of Environmental Studies at Macalester College, and currently a Visiting Scholar at the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota. She received her PhD from the Univ. of California Santa Cruz in Environmental Studies and served as a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow in the Science, Technology and Society Program at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Her teaching and research focus on energy and climate policy, citizen science, community based research and sustainable development initiatives. She is currently the principal investigator on a multiyear US National Science Foundation study titled "Mining Futures". She also directed a NOAA funded project on diversity and deliberation in urban climate adaptation called Ready & Resilient, which received a 2016 award from the Climate Adaptation Partnership and a 2018 Minnesota Campus Compact Presidents' Award. Dr. Phadke was also one of co-organizers of the WorldWide Views on Climate and Energy project, sponsored by the Danish Board of Technology to provide citizen input into the UN Climate Summit.



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