Pandora's Box: Digging the Earth, Killing the Future

Common Dreams
Landgrabbing and mineral extraction spell disaster for Earth

The extent and the scale of the increase in world mineral extraction over the last 10 years is staggering, according to a new report. Across Latin America, Asia and Africa, more and more community lands, rivers and ecosystems are being despoiled, displaced and devoured by mining activities. The rights of farming and indigenous communities are increasingly ignored in the race to grab land and water. Each wave of new extractive technologies requires ever more water to wrench the material from its source. The hunger for these materials is a growing threat to the necessities for life: water, fertile soil and food. The implications are obvious, if not widely ignored by the industrial and economic powers that profit from such activities.

The report, Opening Pandora's Box - A New Wave of Land Grabbing for the Extractive Industries and The Devastating Impact on Earth, was spearheaded by the Gaia foundation and supported by various groups including Friends of the Earth International, Grain, Oilwatch and Navdanya in India.

For example, the report cites that over the last ten years, iron ore production is up by 180%; cobalt by 165%; lithium by 125%, and coal by 44%. The increase in prospecting has also grown exponentially, which means this massive acceleration in extraction will continue if concessions are granted as freely as they are now.

"We live on a beautiful and wondrous planet," write the authors in the executive summary to the report, "the only one we know of in our cosmos. She suddenly feels very small and vulnerable in the face of the momentum of destruction we have unleashed on her, through our conscious and unconscious actions. We must recognise this reality: if we continue in our current direction, our children will be left to clean up an increasingly barren and unstable planet, littered with toxic wastelands and a huge scarcity of water, which we would have left in our wake."

"We live on a beautiful and wondrous planet - the only one we know of in our cosmos. She suddenly feels very small and vulnerable in the face of the momentum of destruction we have unleashed on her, through our conscious and unconscious actions."

Environment editor at The Guardian, Jon Vidal, digested the report, and added:

Africa is the epicentre of the mining industry's search for minerals. Of the 10 biggest mining deals to be completed last year, seven were in Africa, according to Ernst & Young. Mining group Anglo American has earmarked $8bn (£5bn) for new platinum, diamond, iron ore and coal projects on the continent, and Brazil's Vale has said it plans to spend more than $12bn over the next five years in Africa. [...]

China, which has invested heavily in African mines, now sucks up much of the world's mineral resources. According to the report, it uses 53% of the world's cement, 47% of its iron ore, 46% of its coal and more than 40% of the world's steel, lead, zinc and aluminium. However, it re-exports much of this in the form of finished products for world markets.

The loss of enormous quantities of soil, and the eviction of people to make way for large-scale extraction now threaten to make millions of people landless and hungry, a recipe for social problems, says the report.

Water could well be a factor in limiting the extraction of minerals in future. Most mining companies have said they are already experiencing shortages. If demand continues to grow at the same rate that it has in the last decade, industry demands for fresh water are expected to grow from 4,500bn cubic metres today to 6,900bn cubic metres in 2030.

"Humans have almost cleared the surface of the earth. Now all efforts are geared towards going beneath the surface. Large-scale mining is now targeting all parts of the planet," said Gathuri Mburu, co-ordinator of the African Biodiversity Network.

Larger Profits + Safety Shortcuts = Death

Saturday, May 21, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

by David Macaray

 

It was a year and six weeks ago (April 5, 2010) that 29 coal miners died in a massive explosion in Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch mine in Montcoal, West Virginia, making it the worst U.S. mining disaster since 1970.

On May 19, 2011, an independent investigation commissioned by the state’s former governor reported conclusively what everybody involved already knew….that the accident was the result of safety violations by Massey management. In truth, the Upper Big Branch mine was more or less a death trap.

In the investigators’ own words, “The disaster at Upper Big Branch was man-made and could have been prevented had Massey Energy followed basic, well-tested and historically proven safety procedures." The message couldn’t be any plainer: Had Massey paid as much attention to mine safety as it did to company profits, those 29 miners would still be alive.

And it wasn’t as if safety violations were alien to the company. Indeed, Massey Energy Co. was viewed by many as a major accident waiting to happen. In the previous five years leading up to the 2010 disaster, Massey had been cited for more than 1,300 safety violations by the MSHA (Mine Safety and Health Administration), including poor ventilation—believed to be the cause of the explosion. In 2009 alone, Massey was cited 64 times for ventilation violations.

As Gary Hardesty, an AWPPW (Assoc. of Western Pulp & Paper Workers) safety consultant, once put it, “Because maintaining a safe facility costs money, many companies see safety only as another form of overhead.” Obviously, while Massey management bears the brunt of the blame for regarding worker safety as “overhead”—money they would just as soon not have to spend—the MSHA deserves much of the blame as well.

Blithely issuing one safety citation after another to a renegade company with a proven record of ignoring them (or getting them reduced in the appeal process) is not what a government watchdog agency is charged to do. Mechanically going through the motions of slapping a company on the wrist, and desultorily filing the necessary paperwork, is not the same as hands-on regulation an industry’s safety practices. The MSHA failed in its duty.

And, of course, there’s another component to this tragedy, one reflecting organized labor’s unfortunate loss of influence, not only in the industry but in the country at large. As anyone who’s been paying attention to the mining industry since the 1970s knows, as the percentage of union-affiliated mines continues to decline, mining accidents continue to increase. Statistics show that 92-percent of all mine accidents occur in non-union facilities.

In an interview I conducted a couple of years ago with Phil Smith, Communications Director of the United Mine Workers (UMW) International, he made it clear that U.S. mine owners are in collusion to keep miners from seeking union representation. And even though collusion is a violation of federal labor law, one that the NLRB hasn’t seriously addressed, the companies continue to do it. They do it through intimidation and old-fashioned black-balling.

Because coal mining is a close-knit community, once your name gets put on a company shit-list as a “union activist” or “union sympathizer,” it’s going to stay on that list, and you’re going to find it difficult to get hired anywhere. Coal miners might be a remarkably tough but courageous breed of worker, but, tough or not, they have to work to eat, and there are only so many mining jobs to go around. Few are willing to rock the boat.

According to Phil Smith, even on those occasions when a mine does go union, companies have been known to shut down the operation, change names by selling it off to a “phantom subsidiary,” and re-open the mine as a non-union facility. And if anyone squawks too loudly about the illegality of this arrangement, they find themselves out of a job.

So while it’s gratifying to see Massey Energy found guilty of egregious safety violations, it didn’t exactly come as a revelation. Massey management knew it all along, the miners knew it, the MSHA knew it, and the UMW knew it. Alas, the families of those 29 men learned it a year too late.

Mountaintop Removal Mining is Horrible

EXCELLENT!!!

EPA proposes veto of major US mountaintop removal site

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed an unprecedented veto to restrict or prohibit mining at a major proposed US mountaintop removal coal mining site.

If the veto is finalized, it would invalidate a permit first issued in 2007 for the Army Corps of Engineers at the Spruce No. 1 surface mine in southern West Virginia.

In explaining its decision, the EPA said Friday the Arch Coal Inc. mine would pollute surrounding water, fill over seven miles (11 kilometers) of stream, would cause "unacceptable" harm to wildlife and "directly impact" some 2,278 acres (922 hectares) of forest.

A rare step in three decades of mountaintop mining in West Virginia, Kentucky and Virginia, the decision was the first time the EPA has proposed to veto a mine that already had received a permit.

It was the 12th time the agency has used its veto power for any project since the 1972 Clean Water Act became law.

"Landscape and site-specific assessments reveal that past and current mountaintop mining has caused substantial, irreplaceable loss of resources and an irreversible effect on these resources within the Coal River basin," the EPA said in a statement.

In its summary of its proposal on the Spruce No. 1 mine, the agency said that "applying the lessons of the past, we now know that failure to control mining practices has resulted in persistent environmental degradation in the form of acid mine drainage and other impacts that cost billions to remedy."

Environmentalists say mountaintop mining, which consists in removing entire coal seams are removed from the tops of mountains, pollutes streams and valleys, dumps toxic mining byproducts and disfigures the landscape.

Arch Coal condemned the EPA's action and vowed to "vigorously defend the Spruce permit by all legal means."

Its stock prices closed 20 cents lower at 22.69 dollars on Friday.

Environmental groups, meanwhile, hailed the EPA's move.

"The best available science tells us that proposed mines like the massive Spruce Mine would pollute waterways, destroy mountains and devastate communities," the Sierra Club's director of environmental quality Ed Hopkins said in a statement.

According to Business Week, mountaintop mining accounts for six percent of US coal production. Coal supplies about 50 percent of US electricity needs.

+++

Here's what mountaintop removal looks like, before and after: