Academician Melnikov Research Institute of Comprehensive Exploitation of Mineral Resources—IPKON, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia:

Yu. P. Galchenko, Leading Researcher, Professor, Doctor of Engineering Sciences, schtrek33@mail.ru

In the article, against the analysis of the causes and contradictions that determine the development of the modern global ecological crisis, the role of the geomechanical component is substantiated for the first time and the hypothesis of the transformation of the crisis of reducers into the crisis of geospheres is considered. It is shown that the main distinguishing feature of this crisis is not so much an unprecedented increase in the rate of extraction of lithospheric matter, but rather an increase in the volume of solid waste stored on the Earth’s surface ahead of these rates. A large-scale change in the geomechanical equilibrium of the geological and geonomic environment generates far-reaching environmental consequences and makes it necessary to determine the ways and possibilities of further development of the techno- and biosphere of the Earth in the mode of “coevolution of antagonists”. A hypothesis has been put forward and developed about the structure of anthropogenically altered subsurface as a new ecological and geomechanical object arising in the lithosphere during the development of mineral resources. The joint analysis of indicators characterizing the development of the mineral resource complex (currently and in centennial retrospect) and the physical technosphere as a human habitat is carried out, and it is found that due to the extensive form of technological development of the mining industry, more than half of the matter extracted during the development of lithosphere resources is not involved in economic turnover and becomes one of the components of the developing ecological crisis. The total size of these rocks is almost three times the mass of the created physical technosphere, which dramatically increases the environmental and weight load on the earth’s surface and inevitably leads to its deformation. The necessity and prospects of greening the technological paradigm of the development of mineral resources by materializing the idea of nature-like technologies, with regard to specifics of geological structure of mineral deposits and the methods of their development, are outlined.

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