(no subject)

[stellar_muddle]

Ten Reasons Why You Should Never Accept a Diamond Ring from Anyone, Under Any Circumstances, Even If They Really Want to Give You One
Good incentives not to buy diamonds. But the question is, what percentage of these comments apply equally well to any mining industry - metal, mineral or oil? Emerald mining in South America ain't pretty and don't ask how many Chinese coal miners die each year.
Ready to start protesting yet? You should be.
Then imagine your life without metals, minerals or oil.
When you get frustrated with banging the rocks together, start thinking about actually supporting and encouraging mining initiatives which aim for decent wages and working conditions, reasonable environmental planning and management, good safety standards and realise that you are going to have to pay for that.
And remember the next time you are shrilly shrieking "Not in my backyard!!", "Not in my pristine country!", if they can't do it in your country with reasonably strict environmental, labour and health and safety law, they will toddle off to some third world backwater where they can really exploit the locals, bribe to avoid the law, fuck up the local environment and rake in a quick buck before tootling off to the next decent cheap spot on the map. But then it is no longer in your back yard and you can happily ignore it and go on oblivious, while making your token donations to deserving overseas causes in times of publicised natural disaster only.

Mind you, farming will screw the land over to a much less recoverable degree...

I did think that the Christmas present of a clean drinking water supply for an impoverished villiage somewhere, donated on our behalf, was one of the better presents out there. (Thanks Z's sister for that)

And I like recycled gold:)

Comments

[basal-surge.livejournal.com]

Dunno. I'm not sure we need that whole consumer society, myself. What the world wants, and what it needs, are very, very different things. Having worked in mines in the developed world, and in the third world, I can tell you that the money it would take to make conditions tolerable for the third world miners is fairly negligible, and the safety tech required has been mostly available in the west for about forty years. However, mining companies like working places where lax and corrupt government means that even if safety and environmental statutes exist, they are not enforced.

And, of course, they're not above machinegunning the locals if that works, too.(Anglo American Gold, anyone?)