This is a general education unit that introduces students to the technical, social, economic and environmental aspects that lie behind the production and use of mineral and energy resources in Australia and the rest of the world. The end products of these resources are familiar to us as steel for cars, aluminium for pots and pans, crude oil for petrol and coal for electricity.
Nowadays, we have to consider acid rain, greenhouse effect, heavy metal pollution, oil spills, radiation, land degradation and land rights. Scarcity and resource exhaustion are also concerns. We demand and accept the goods and services provided by the minerals industries, including the increased wealth resulting from mineral exports, yet increasingly oppose the development of the resources that produce these goods.
This does not mean that opposition to development is necessarily bad, or that development is necessarily good. What it does mean is that it is important to look at the broad picture rather than concentrate on a particular, narrow facet of the 'non renewable' resource industries.
