Why do we extract minerals in the UK?
We mine them because the UK still needs a range of industrial minerals to manufacture steel, cement, brick and other industries, and support the delivery of new infrastructure and housing. It creates a lot less CO2 if we extract minerals here in the UK rather than import them from overseas. #minelocal
• Lord Browne of Ladyton: “I have a bone to pick with the Government about whether it is unhelpfully misleading to describe our achievement of cutting emissions by 42% without going on, every time, to explain that they omit from the equation a substantial amount of carbon emissions that are clearly our responsibility. That aside, it is clear that the great majority of what we have achieved on any measure has been achieved by us stopping doing things. The major contributor to the percentage cut—whether 42% or, more truly, only 17%—is that we stopped doing things. Mainly we stopped generating electricity from coal and, almost as importantly, we stopped manufacturing and exported the responsibility for our growing consumption to the sovereign territory of others, which, of course, allows us not to count it and to celebrate our own success while criticising them…” Lords Hansard, 12/3/20, col 1164, https://hansard.parliament.uk/lords/2020-03-12/debates/C498C8A8-F9B2-4DA4-94AD-B31C9227D3B2/GreenEconomy