Pitfalls and Pipelines - Philippine Indigenous Peoples Links

70 Pitfalls and Pipelines: Indigenous Peoples and Extractive Industries
terms of fossil fuels and climate change debates. It seeks to
argue the case for the importance of action on coal.
With an eye on indigenous issues, the paper first reviews
the issue of climate change, it then investigates mining’s contribution
to global warming, before reviewing the impact that
climate change will have on mining—and those unfortunate
enough to be living near climate change affected mines. Finally,
it reviews the issue of the arguments around uranium’s contribution
to climate change, and to indigenous peoples and the
impacts threatened by continuing uranium mining.
The mining industry has a two-way relationship with climate
change. First, mining has a profound effect on climate
change. It is currently a large consumer of carbon-based
power in mining and in processing its raw material into useable
products. Also the minerals mined, especially coal, contribute
to the human impacts on climate through greenhouse
gas build up. Second, it is itself impacted by climate change in
a number of ways.
1.3.1 A Future of Climate Change
There is now increasingly clear evidence of climate change
and global warming. Global warming and related concerns of
increases in extreme weather events are progressively recognized
by the scientific community, by governments, and even
the mining industry, as a major threat to the future of current
human society. 2
Major companies such as BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto
have accepted climate change, as has the industry body the
International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM). 3 Pockets
of climate change denial, however, continue to exist. Sections
of the mining industry—particularly companies with heavy
investment in coal mining—have by turns questioned the existence
of global warming and/or the role of human activity in
generating global warming (see Box 2, Peabody Energy).