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Minerals and metals are part of everyday existence, including in the air people breathe. They are either in, or have a hand in creating, nearly all of consumer products. As essential as they are, minerals and metals are too often unseen, unappreciated, and unnoticed. In the teaching of preservice primary and secondary teachers as well as high school students, the authors have found that while students might understand the relationship between burning coal and air pollution and may have learned about gold and diamond mining in history courses, they have little understanding about the extraction of minerals and metals that fuel their lives. The authors believe that lessons framed around the motivations, harms, and consequences of mining, in particular metals and minerals, are critical in fostering a heightened attunement to the precarious state of the environment and the role product consumption plays in its ongoing deterioration. Upon completion of the lessons in this article, students will have a heightened awareness of the role mining and minerals play in the creation of everyday objects and will begin to theorize possible alternative framings to renewable energy.

In this article, we first (re)trace the presence and absence of mining, metals and extractionary practices, what we call MMEs, from environmental and sustainability curricular frameworks United Nations' Act Now Framework. Then, we critique the swelling markets, mentalities, and mastermindings used to develop and produce "clean" and "renewable" energy sources/solutions. As one of many examples, there is increasing skepticism among Indigenous communities that history may repeat itself as the quest for "clean" results in further displacement and violations of tribal sovereignty (Healy & Baker, 2021; Holzman & Waldman, 2022; Shah & Bloomer, 2018). Notwithstanding our (e.g., authors) academic positionalities in social studies education, one of our conclusions considers the necessity of interdisciplinary collaboration between science and social studies on the issue of sustainability through MMEs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]