Colorado School of Mines is a public research university devoted to engineering and applied science. It has the highest admissions standards of any public university in Colorado and among the highest of any public university in the U.S.
Mines has distinguished itself by developing a curriculum and research program geared towards responsible stewardship of the earth and its resources. In addition to strong education and research programs in traditional fields of science and engineering, Mines is one of a very few institutions in the world having broad expertise in resource exploration, extraction, production and utilization. As such, Mines occupies a unique position among the world’s institutions of higher education.
Since its founding in 1874, the translation of the school’s mission into educational programs has been influenced by the needs of society. Those needs are now focused more clearly than ever before. The world faces a crisis in balancing resource availability with environmental protection and Mines and its programs are central to the solution.
La RD Congo est le principal fournisseur mondial de cobalt, utilisé dans les batteries des véhicules électriques, et fait valoir ses droits dans la transition vers les énergies renouvelables.
An artisanal miner holds a cobalt stone at the Shabara artisanal mine near Kolwezi.
Junior Kannah/AFP via Getty Images
The Democratic Republic of Congo is the world’s major supplier of cobalt, used in electric vehicle batteries, and is asserting its rights as an equal partner in the renewable energy transition.
Steel factories, like this one in China, are major sources of greenhouse gas emissions.
Kevin Frayer/Getty Images
Russia isn’t a major producer of uranium, but it handles a large share of the steps that turn it into nuclear fuel. That makes it a major player in this globalized industry.
The energy transition is already underway.
Volker Hartmann/Getty Images
Major international donors, including the US and UK, are pledging to stop funding fossil fuel projects overseas, but they aren’t making the equivalent cuts at home.
Reducing fossil use and increasing renewable energy worldwide are crucial to both sustainable development and fighting climate change.
Kevin Frayer/Getty Images
Energy and climate policies aren’t always headed in the same direction, but if they work together they can tackle two of the biggest challenges of our time.
U.S. President Joe Biden, with presidential climate envoy John Kerry, opened the Leaders Summit on Climate on April 22, 2021, by announcing new U.S. targets.
AP Photo/Evan Vucci
Right now, the nation is almost entirely dependent on other countries for minerals that are used in everything from wind turbines to strike fighters and satellites.
Through the Paris Agreement, the world’s countries agreed to work to keep global warming well under 2 degrees Celsius.
Saeed Khan/AFP via Getty Images
The US is formally back in the Paris climate agreement as of today. As one of the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitters, it has a lot of work to do, with food security, health and safety at stake.
Even if every country meets its commitments, the world will still be on track to warm by more than 3 degrees Celsius this century, a new UNEP report shows.
Kevin Frayer/Getty Images
Bold visions for slowing global warming have emerged from all over the world. What’s not clear is how countries will meet them.
President-elect Joe Biden picked former Secretary of State John Kerry, shown with him in 2015, to be U.S. climate envoy in the next administration.
AP Photo/Andrew Harnik
Choosing former Secretary of State John Kerry as climate envoy is the first step. To regain trust, the U.S. will also have to take concrete actions to cut its own greenhouse gas emissions.
A surface coal mine in Gillette, Wyoming, photographed in 2008.
Greg Goebel/Flickr
The pandemic recession has reduced US energy demand, roiling budgets in states that are major fossil fuel producers. But politics and culture can impede efforts to look beyond oil, gas and coal.
Refugees in the city of Qab Illyas in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley dig their own water wells.
Hussein A. Amery
Both drought and violence drove many Syrians out of their homes; even if the war ends, the continuing difficulty of farming will make it hard for them to return.