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Abstract Cleaner production is the continuous application of an integrated preventive environmental strategy which stressed the importance of environment and human beings. Although the application of cleaner production is becoming more and more mature in different industries, since the complexity of the mining operation itself and its extensive and complex impacts on the ecological environment, the application of cleaner production in the mining industry encounters great challenges. For this purpose, the paper presents some developments and new insights of environmental problems and deep mining strategy for cleaner production in mines. Firstly, the general impacts on the ecological environment of mining industry and the current corresponding solutions as well as future prospects are presented. Secondly, the ecological environment pollution induced by tailings dam and its elimination approaches are reviewed. For the accelerating volume of tailings dam waiting to be processed, the exploration and research of the comprehensive utilization and treatment of tailings is expected to be more effective with larger consumption and wider range of application. The development direction is the establishment of mine without tailings. With the development of modern technology, some intelligent monitoring and warning technologies have helped the mining engineers to keep a vigilant eye on tailings dam continually. Finally, to convert the "harm" of four highs and one disturbance induced by the complex mechanical environment in deep mines into "benefit", various specific measures with relatively high novelty and sustainability are recommended. Moreover, the conception map of safer and more efficient exploitation of resources in deep mines is depicted for industrial best practice and future research directions to enhance cleaner production work in mining. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The so-called Paris Agreement, signed by 195 countries, has led to the setting of some ambitious target reductions in greenhouse gas emissions by most developed countries. The over-arching goal of those reduction targets is to limit global warming to less than 2 o C compared to pre-industrial levels. Yet, despite these commitments from the highest governance levels, there is still no deterministic model on how these national target reductions will be cascaded down to the commercial sector, which accounts for the lion's share of these emissions. In this paper, we present a novel framework which enables the setting, measurement and tracking of the emissions performance of every commercial entity based on a single metric. We further present empirical evidence from the automotive industry to illustrate how the model helps to readily identify the low versus high performers. The model also reveals one car company that stands out as the industry benchmark by already exceeding the performance required by the 2025 emissions target set by the US. The model proves successful in achieving the objectives of being: science-based, goal-driven, equitable, comparable and actionable, and as such can be readily used to accurately compare competitors from the same industry and provide the basis of a more equitable, performance-based carbon tax market, as well as the ability to assess accurately how well a specific country is meeting its reduction quota and how the various industry sectors are impacting that goal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Geoengineering, which is the intentional large-scale manipulation of the environment, has been suggested as an effective means of mitigating global warming from anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. In this paper, we will review and assess technical and theoretical aspects of land-based, atmosphere-based, ocean-based and space-based geoengineering schemes as well as their potential impacts on global climate and ecosystem. Most of the proposed geoengineering schemes carried out on land or in the ocean are to use physical, chemical or biological approaches to remove atmospheric CO 2 . These schemes are able to only sequester an amount of atmospheric CO 2 that is small compared with cumulative anthropogenic emissions. Most of geoengineering schemes carried out in the atmosphere or space are based on increasing planetary albedo. These schemes have relatively low costs and short lead times for technical implementation, and can act rapidly to reduce temperature anomalies caused by greenhouse gas emissions. The costs and benefits of geoengineering are likely to vary spatially over the planet with some countries and regions gaining considerably while others may be faced with a worse set of circumstances than would be the case without geoengineering. Since current research on geoengineering is limited and various international treaties may limit some geoengineering experiments in the real world, the Geoengineering Model Intercomparison Project (GeoMIP) provides a framework of coordinated experiments for all earth system modeling groups to test geoengineering schemes. However, these experiments used on a global scale have difficulty with accurate resolution of regional and local impacts, so future research on geoengineering is expect to be done by combining earth system models with regional climate models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]