the hidden shame in the global industrial economy

8/14/2019 The Hidden Shame in the Global Industrial Economy

1/11

WORLDWATCHWORLDWATCHVision for a Sustainable World

For more information about Worldwatch Institute and its programsand publications, please visit our website at www.worldwatch.org

Excerpted from the January/February 2004 WORLD WATCH magazine 2003 Worldwatch Institute

The Hidden Shame of the

Global Industrial Economy

by Ed Ayres


2/11

WORLDWATCH January/February 200420

In the 16th cen-tury, Hernando

Cortez sailed to Mexico seeking gold for the Spanishempire. He found a lot of it, and seized it without com-punction, killing any Aztecs who stood in his way.

Today, that kind of plunder may seem antiquatedabhorred by the community of nations. Of course, westill suffer the depredations of various transnationalcriminal cartels and mafias. But those are the exceptions,the outlaws. Today, no self-respecting nation or cor-poration would engage in the kind of brutal decimationof a whole culture, simply to seize its treasure, thatCortez did. Or would it?

In fact, the plundering of precious metals and otherassets is far moreprevalent today than in centuries past,

and on a larger scale. Now its not just Spain and a fewother military powers seeking global dominance, butscores of nations seeking cell phones and teak furniture,that are seizing materials from native culturessomeof these materials in quantities that the conquistadors

could never have imagined. Now its not just silverand gold, but coltan (for those cell phones), copper, tita-nium, bauxite, uranium, cobalt, oil, mahogany, andteak. And now, in place of the extinguished Aztecsand other now decimated cultures, its hundreds of stillsurviving cultures that are being overrun, in perhaps ahundred countries. And most significantly, while thelooting is still done by invaders from across the oceans,it is often sanctioned and facilitated by the victimizedpeoples own national governments.

The Hidden Shame

of the Global

Industrial Economy

Conquistadors

DEATH BY SILTATION

Dying forest downstream from the

Ok Tedi mine in Papua New Guinea.

Photo courtesy Mineral Policy Center

by Ed Ayres


3/11

January/February 2004 WORLDWATCH 21

But while the plunder is greater now, it is in somerespects less openly pursued and less visible than it wouldhave been for Cortez, had the technology to observeit been available in his day. The conquistadors wouldlikely have reveled in seeing their exploits shown on TV.

Today such publicity is avoided, for compelling reasons:First, plunder usually entails invasion, and in the cen-

turies since Cortez the worlds nations have movedtoward nearly unanimous condemnation of unpro-

voked invasionas reflected in their widely sharedshock at the U.S. invasion of Iraq. There has been par-allel progress in recognizing the wrongness of enslav-ing other people or simply killing them for theirproperty. Theres an evolving appreciation of humandiversity, and of the idea of a global (as opposed to

European, or nationalist) community. Yet the incentivesfor seizing the wealth of others are as economically irre-sistible today as they ever have been, and the means ofdoing so are now far more widely available. So theseizing continues, but not necessarily by military assault.

Thats not to say there arent still places where the jobis done with outright killing, as the following pages willdetail. In Indonesia, Sierra Leone, and Nigeria, therehave been cases in which people who opposed extrac-tive operations on their land were given Cortez-styleremovals from the discussion. But where the scrutinyof the global media is present, the means are moreindirect, and appear to be accidental. People livingnear uranium mines that have left piles of radioactive

waste on their land die of cancer in unusual numbers,

Where do the raw materials to build our

paneled offices, airplanes, and cell phones

come from? Maybe you really dont want to know.

A lot of them come from plunder, of a kind

wed like to think came to an end long ago.


4/11


and their children have unusual numbers of birthdefects. Indians whose land has been taken over by oil-drilling operations are slowly poisoned by petrochem-ical contamination of their water and soil. Those livingdownstream from large gold mines find their drinking

water laced with cyanide. Food sources are destroyed,as are sacred placesand people die of spiritual, as

well as physical, deprivation. Those kinds of dyingdont make the evening news.

Second, the plunder is less visible now because it

rarely need be witnessed by the people who end upwith the wealththe major purchasers of gasoline orgold chains or tickets to fly on aluminum-bodiedplanes. In gold rush days, the lucky miner who founda nice nugget could buy a fancy watch. In the mod-ern economy, the man with the Rolex has likelynever been anywhere near a gold mine. The bigextractive industries are far from the urban centers

where most of the affluent live. In poorer countriesfrom which much of the worlds mineral and forest

wealth is taken, the extractive operations are often inremote jungles or subsistence farming regions

homelands to people who are largely left out of

the global dialogue and trade.Finally, there is the unspoken disincentive of the

worlds media giants to expose the exploitative natureof the industries that provide the raw materials of theeconomy that pays their way. Nearly all media, whetherprint or electronic, are funded by advertising for con-sumer goods that too often originate with raw materi-als largely taken from indigenous land or from ostensiblyprotected parkland. It would perhaps be unfair to saythe media are part of a conspiracy of silence, because

in all likelihood most media executives rarely stop tothink about what fuels the economy that allows themto profit. But its fair to suggest that theres a reluctanceto undermine the foundations of the economy on

which their whole business rests.Not all extractive industries operate in the shad-

ows. Many are honest businesses, run by people who areattentive to the human and environmental impacts oftheir operations. But those businesses are far too few. Bysome estimates, for example, some 80 percent of the log-ging done in Indonesiaone of the largest producersof wood in the worldis illegal. Some of the largest

mines in the world, dumping thousands of tons of

ScottS.Warren


5/11


deadly poisons into their surroundings each day, areoperating without the consent of the people whoseland they have taken over.

Mining andlogging opera-

tionsthe extractive industriesarent just smallpin-pricks in the Earths skin, though they may appearthat way on maps. Apologists may think of them as smallholes discreetly drilled in large territories, for which smallcompensations to the impoverished inhabitants of thoseterritories may be sufficient. But in fact, extraction hasfar-reaching impacts and costs. Because nature is notstatic but involves continuous movement of wind,

water, and wildlife, contaminants released by minescan cause Pandora-like destruction.

One of the most alarming forms of contaminationis that of heap-leach gold mining, a modern technique

that involves pouring rivers of cyanide on huge piles oflow-grade ore to extract the gold. Cyanide is extremelypoisonous: a teaspoonful containing a 2-percent cyanidesolution can kill an adult. In February 2000, a damholding heap-leach waste at a gold mine in Romaniathe Baia Mare gold mine owned by an Australian com-pany, Esmeralda Explorationbroke and dumped 22million gallons of cyanide into the Tisza River. The poi-son flowed more than 500 kilometers downstream intoHungary and Serbia, wreaking what some called the

worst environmental disaster since the Chornobylnuclear explosion in 1986. Unfortunately, this event

could not be written off as the last gasp of an outmodedtechnology. Heap-leach gold mining is on the increase.In Peru, the Yanacocha gold minesecond largest inthe worldsits atop the South American continentaldivide, from which any similar breech would run all the

way to both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. And inTanzania, the Geita mine has just been sited on theNyamelembo River, which drains into Lake Victoria.One of the largest and most valuable fresh-water lakeson the planet, Victoria is essential to the economies ofKenya and Uganda as well as Tanzania. A Kenyan envi-ronmental professor, Wangari Maathai (now the coun-

trys environment minister), described the Geita mineas the most insensitive economic undertaking I haveever come across, explaining that it is not just a mat-ter of poisoning people. Very soon, the EuropeanUnion will ban all fish exports from East Africa justbecause some toxic elements have found their way intothe fish, and it will be a great economic loss to the localpeople whose life depends entirely on fishing.

The kinds of spills produced by modern minesshouldnt be compared to the relatively petty crimethat occurs when someone dumps dry cleaning fluid intothe sewer drain, or drops his old batteries into the

garbage. Mine waste sends huge plumes of poison into

the worlds rainforests, groundwater, and food. In Zort-man, Montana, in 1982, the Zortman-Landusky goldmine spilled 52,000 gallons of cyanide into the localgroundwater, and it was discovered only when a localmine worker smelled cyanide in his faucet at home.Cyanide was the agent used to kill Jews in Hitlers gas

chambers. Today, in West Papua, Indonesia, a goldmine owned by the U.S. company Freeport McMoRandumps 120,000 tons of cyanide-laced waste into localrivers every day. In Papua New Guinea, the Ok Tedi cop-per mine, which was built on the local peoples land with-out their consent, dumps 200,000 tons of waste per dayinto the Fly River and has brought the once biologicallyrich region to ruin.

There are other means, besides rivers, by which dam-age from extraction can be spread. Wind, in particular,can be as dangerous a factor with big mines as withbroken nuclear plants. Uranium mines produce huge piles

of crushed ore waste, or tailings. According to the Cen-ter for World Indigenous Studies, the most commonhealth risk associated with uranium mining is breathingradon-222 gas, which will continue to seep from the tail-ings for thousands of years to come. In Australia, the tail-ings dam of an abandoned uranium mine was burst bymonsoon rains, and subsequent dispersal of the waste byriver and wind has polluted an area of 100 square kilo-meters of landdriving out the Aboriginal people wholived there. In the U.S. Southwest, radioactive waste froman abandoned uranium mine owned by El Paso NaturalGas Company has blown toward an area used by Navajo

Indians for shepherding.

THE KHANTY PEOPLE OF SIBERIA live on ancestral land

that, unfortunately for them, is now being used for 65% of

Russias total oil production. Left: two Khanty brothers at

home. Below: a capped oil well in the Samatlor oil field

north of Nizhnevartovsk on Khanty lands.Big Footprints

ScottS.Warren


6/11

*Planned or Proposed OperationsScale varies in this Mercator Projection.

Argentina, Patagonia*People of Esquel vehemently opposeopening of an open-pit mine by theCanadian company Meridien Gold,which would blast 42,000 tons of rockper day and soak it with cyanide, fromwhich it is feared leaks would poisonthe local water supply. The mine mayopen anyway.

BoliviaLogging invaded 500,000hectares of Guarayoindigenous territory with-out Guarayo permission.

Logging invaded 140,000hectares of Chiquitano deMonte Verde territorywithout permission.

Brazil

Gold mines dumpcyanide into the Amazon.

Canada, Northwest TerritoriesIn the town of Deline, many of theindigenous Dene men who worked inthe local uranium mine died of cancer.

Canada, OntarioAny major leaks fromElliot Lake mine, whichproduces 45 percentof Canadas uranium,would flow into theSerpent River IndianReserve.

Canada, SaskatchewanThe Key Lake uranium mineis sited in the indigenousDene peoples subsistencehunting grounds.

Colombia*Occidental Oil and Ecopetrolhave planned oil drilling adja-cent to Uwa Indian territorythat the Uwa say woulddestroy their land and culture.In 1995, the Uwa vowed tocommit mass suicide if theexploitation proceeded.

DemocraticRepublic of CongoMining coltan for cellphones in or near theOkapi Reserve andKahuzi-Biega NationalPark has led to an 80-to 90-percent declinein population of theeastern lowland gorilla

EcuadorARCO drilling foroil on 200,000hectares of Shuarand Achuarpeoples territory.

GhanaOperations at the Ashantigold fields have exacerbatedvector-borne diseases,respiratory tract diseases,and acute conjunctivitis, andhave caused massive socialand economic disruptionsamong the people of Ghana.

Guyana*Proposed reopening of the Omaigold mine, owned by the Canadiancompany Cambior, would allowmassive dumping of cyanide wasteinto the Essequibo River, despiteprotests of local Amazonian people.

Liberia$100 million worth of timber wascut in 2000 for the enrichment ofthe dictator Charles Taylor and thepurchase of weapons, primarily bythe Oriental Timber Company, whichbulldozed villages in its way.

Mexico, ChiapasIndigenous and non-indigenousgroups are bitterly resisting theMexican governments buildingof a major highway to speedmilitary occupation and oildevelopment in Chiapas.

PeruYanacocha gold mine,second-largest in the world,dumps cyanide waste intowatersheds reaching theentire width of the continent.The mine itself now covers

9,000 hectares.

SpainA spill from the Los Fraileslead and zinc mine in 1998released more than 4 millioncubic meters of toxic slurry,which covered several thousandhectares of farmland andthreatens the Doana NationalPark, a World Heritage Area.

U.S., California*Glamis Imperial open-pit heap-leaching goldmine could leak cyanide into the groundwater of an already water-scarce state.

U.S., ColoradoThe Summitvillemine abandonedby Pegasus MiningCompany spilled

cyanide and killed17 miles of theAlamosa River.

U.S., Nevada*Recently approved mines near Carlin willlower the water table of an extremelywater-scarce region by 1,600 feet, andwill likely pollute the Humboldt River andsurrounding groundwater with cyanide.

U.S., New MexicoThe largest known U.S. uraniumdepositthe Grants Mineral Belt,centered on the town of Grantslies partly under the Navajo, Acoma,and Laguna reservations. Indiansare concerned about breathingradon 222 gas, which continuesto seep from crushed ore and milltailings for hundreds of thousandsof years. The Kerr-McGee Corp.mill at Grants contains 33 milliontons of tailings.

*Uranium mine proposed for theNavajo town of Crownpointwould use the groundwater underthe town as an in-situ mediumfor extracting uranium, arousingfears that the radioactive solutionwould leak into the aquifer usedby the Indians for drinking water.

U.S., Utah

Bingham Canyon copper mine is one of onlytwo man-made alterations of the Earth largeenough to be visible from space; toxic wastefrom the half-mile-deep pit has contaminatedsurrounding groundwater and land.

U.S., Washington stateUranium mine on the SpokaneIndian Reservation is within 1mile of the Columbia River andhas been cited by EPA for leakageof radioactive waste into ground water.

Riddled:Here are just a few of the majormining, drilling, and logging operations that have left hugeholes in the Earthmaking the planet look as if it has beenmachine-gunned. Thousands more of these holes are notshown. As human population has expanded and per-capitaconsumption of materials and energy has continued to rise,the search for resources has intensifiedripping into moreand more indigenous homelands and ecosystems.



7/11

Australia, Northern TerritoryWaste from the now-closed Rangeruranium mine contaminated theMagela River used by Aborigines.

The uranium level in their waterreached 4,000 times the safedrinking standard.

The Rum Jungle uranium mine,abandoned in 1971, polluted 100square kilometers and drove outAborigines.

BurmaA natural gas pipeline for Unocal

and Total was built with forcedlabor through the last primaryrainforest in mainland Asia.Burmese government soldierstortured and killed residents toforce evacuation, also openingthe way to unchecked logging.

CambodiaIllegal logging in 2000led to severe deforestation,flooding, destructionof rice crops, anddisplacements of people.

India, BiharVillagers suffer fromradiation emitted byJaduguda uraniummine in Jharkhand.

India, Meghalaya*Proposed uraniummine would displace30,000 people.

KyrgyzstanKumptor Gold Minespilled 2 tons ofsodium cyanideinto the BarskoonRiver, poisoning2,600 peoplein Kyrgyzstan.

Indonesia, West PapuaThe largest gold mine in the world,

owned by U.S. company FreeportMcMoRan, on land seized from theAmunge and Kamoro people, dumps120,000 tons of cyanide-lacedwaste per day into the local river.

Kenya*A Titanium extraction operation by theCanadian company Tiomin Resourceswould strip 1,500 tons per hour fromthe sands on the Kenyan coast, evictingtens of thousands of the indigenousDigo peoples and other local Kenyansand wiping out fragile ecosystems.

Madagascar*A proposed titanium-mining operation by theAnglo-Australian company Rio Tinto would strip40 kilometers of coastal dunes in Madagascar,deforesting and polluting a large area of one ofthe worlds megadiverse countries and ravagingthe ancestral homeland of the local people, whofiercely oppose the project.

New Caledonia*A nickel and cobalt mine planned bythe Canadian company INCO threatensboth the indigenous Kanuk people andthe ecosystems of a country where 14%of the species are on the IUCNs RedList of Threatened Plants. Proposeddumping of the mines chemical wasteinto the ocean would could be a deathknell for the worlds second-largestcoral reef.

eria, Ogonilandovernment deal allowedl Oil to drill with impunity

Ogoni homeland in early0s. When the Ogoni peopleested, their leader wassted and hanged.

Papua New Guinea,Western ProvinceOk Tedi copper mine, ownedby Australian company BHP,dumps 200,000 tons of toxicwaste into the Fly River everyday. Forests, wetlands, andfish in the region are all dying.As many as 2,700 squarekilometers could be destroyed.

PhilippinesTailings dam failure at acopper, gold, and silver minerun by the Marcopper MiningCorp. dumped over 1.5 millioncubic meters of waste intolocal rivers, forcing evacuationof 1,200 people, contaminatingdrinking water and destroyingwildlife, livestock, and crops.

RomaniaCyanide from the BaiaMare gold mine spilledinto the Tisza River, andthence into the Danubefor 500 kilometersthrough Hungary andSerbia, in what was saidto be Europes worstenvironmental disastersince Chornobyl.

Russia, SiberiaHeavy oil production in the area,66% of Russias total, has deforestedand polluted the ancestral territory ofthe Khanty people, destroying theirtraditional culture of reindeer herding,hunting, and fishing.

outh Africat the Nigel and Harmonyold mines, workers werexposed to radiation levelsp to 7 times allowable limits.

SudanOil revenues have financed a civilwar that has killed 2 million people,with the government pursuing ascorched-earth policybombingvillages and destroying livestock.

Tanzania*Giant Geitz gold mine,next to NyamalemboRiver, would drain

cyanide spills into LakeVictoria, dealing apotentially mortal blowto the main economicasset of central Africa.

Tibet*Oil and mineral resourceexploitation by Chinathreatens to furthermarginalize Tibetansin their own country,bringing an invasion ofrelocated Chinese farmersand releasing petro-chemical, cyanide, andmercury pollution to riversserving a large share ofthe worlds population.



8/11


In some cases, the extraction is not at a single pointat all, but takes place over a wide area. Logging oper-ations have decimated some of the worlds most bio-logically valuable forests. Many of these operations areeither illegal or are sanctioned by corrupt national gov-

ernments over the desperate objections of indigenousinhabitants. In Bolivia, in the late 1990s, the govern-ment granted logging concessions covering 500,000hectares of Guarayo Territory and 140,000 hectares ofChiquitano de Monte Verde Territory. In Cambodia,illegal logging has led to severe deforestation, flooding,and destruction of rice cropsand to the displace-ment of people who depended on those forests forsubsistence. In Liberia, in the year 2000, some $100million worth of timber was cut down and sold, mainlyto European consumers, to enrich the dictator CharlesTaylor and to buy arms for his henchmen. In Indone-

sia, the looting of forests has reached new levels, withabout 2 million hectares disappearing every year.

Cortez did nothave to worry

about bad PR. Companies like Shell Oil or FreeportMcMoRan may do their extraction in remote places, and

with the tacit acceptance of the global media, but theycan no longer escape the attention of activists andgroups like Amazon Watch, Rainforest Action Net-

work, and the Mineral Policy Center. Shell was burnedbadly when it was accused of collusion with the Niger-

ian government in the murder of the Ogoni activist Ken

Saro-Wiwa, who had dared to protest Shells ruinationof his peoples homeland. So, the major extractiveindustries have learned to become more discreet abouthow they take what they want. One of the most com-mon strategies is to offer employment in the mines toindigenous people who are not well informed about thehazards, and to develop a dependency that the work-ers and their families are unable to break even when theirhealth begins to breaka contemporary form of inden-tured servitude. An Aborigine writer, Vincent For-rester, describes how this dependency was establishedat the Ranger uranium mine in his peoples region of

Australia. Mining royalties are paid to the government,not to the local people. (Most mining companies dontpay royalties to anyone at all.) The government thensupplies the community with essential services, butdoes not inform the people about the effects of the min-ing on their land and health. This dependency, I

believe, is a form of ransom, writes Forrester. WhiteAustralia says to the under-serviced, fledgling outsta-tion movement, You can have money for Toyotas, forbores, to help you set up, but if mining stops themoney stops too.

A more hardball way of buying acquiescence is sim-ply to find individual members of the local community

who are willing to publicly support a proposed miningproject in exchange for a small payment, which in animpoverished area can be a large inducement. Theoffers open rifts in the local community, causing enoughdisarray to allow the project to gain a foothold. In the

late 1990s, for example, the Navajo Timesreported thatthe HRI corporation, which wanted to open a uraniummine near the Navajo community of Crownpoint, NewMexico, had arranged to give lease payments to someof the Indian landowners living in the community.

According to a report by Chris Shuey of the SouthwestResearch and Information Center in Albuquerque, thetotal amount of the payoff came to $367,000. The pop-ulation of Crownpoint at that time was 2,700, whichmeant HRI was paying $136 per citizen to begin aprocess that would use the communitys underground

water-bearing strata as a medium for in situ leach pro-

cessing of uraniumturning the water into a pregnantsolution from which the uranium would be extracted

within one-half mile of several churches, schools, busi-nesses, and most of the homes in the community.

In Madagascar, the Anglo-Austrialian mining giantRio Tinto has tried to buy off the natives for even less.Rio Tinto wants to mine 40 kilometers of coastal dunes,bulldozing an indigenous homeland that is also a habi-tat for numerous rare and endangered plant species. Thecompanys strategy has been to invite the villagers todinners at which they can eat and drink while watch-ing PRfilms that extol the proposed operation but

make no mention of likely damage.

THE GUARAYO PEOPLE have seen the Bolivian govern-

ment g ive away 500,000 hectares of ancestral forest to log-

ging firms, without their permission. Below: Guarayo farmers

demonstrate for constitutional reform in La Paz. Right: more

forest clearing for soybean production east of Santa Cruz.

DavidMercado,REUTERS2002

Buying Silence


9/11


In hundreds of mining or logging operations aroundthe planet, the main economic incentive for capitula-tion is the lure of jobs. Where people are poor, that lure

of short-term cash can easily blind young workers to thelong-term impacts of the project on their culture andhealthand on the long-term sustainability of their localeconomy. In the Arctic, Inuit communities are nowdivided about whether to welcome more intensive oildrilling. Those who see a threat to their traditional

way of life have put up strong resistance, but its rarelyenough to fend off the incursions, especially whentheir own national governments have been bought off.In a globalized economy, the buying-off of governmentshas become widespread. A few years ago in India, forexample, the indigenous Bhagata, Khond, Konda Reddi,

and Samantha communities found themselves targeted

by foreign companies interested in the bauxite (alu-minum ore) deposits on their lands. Indian constitu-tional law protects indigenous peoples from unwanted

exploitation of this kind, but that did not stop thestate of Andhra Pradesh from secretly inviting the com-paniesand giving them leasesto begin mining. Theopposing parties have been litigating ever since.

When econ-omists talkabout ex-

tractive industries theyre usually referring to min-ing, oil or gas drilling, or loggingessentially, the useof heavy machinery to cut raw materials from theplanet. The concept could easily be broadened to

include pumping water from aquifers, hauling fish from

1986 2001

CourtesyofNASA/GFSC/METI/ERSDAC/J

AROS,andU.S./JapanASTERScienceTeam

Is There ReallyNo Alternative?


10/11


the oceans, shooting monkeysfor bushmeat, or collectinghoney from wild bees. Wefocus here on mining, oildrilling, and logging becausethey have been so heavily con-centrated in places that areboth the homelands of the

worlds marginalized peoplesand the habitats of the mostthreatened ecosystems. Theseindustries are therefore themost directand least regu-latedassaults of industrialsociety on the Earths culturaland biological stability.

To some extent, the lackof restraint in these industries

may reflect an implicit belief,in the governments of indus-trial nations, that the genielong ago exited the bottle,and that trying to undo anydamage it has done now is asunrealistic as trying to undothe damage done by the seiz-ing of Indian territories byEuropeans two or three cen-turies ago. But the idea thatredressing past injustices is

nowunrealistic, too, makesa questionable assumptionthat the descendants of theconquered Indians have longsince been assimilated into themodern industrial economyand share the same benefitsas the descendants of theirconquerors. Yet, the reality ofplaces like the Navajo reser-

vations in the U.S. Southwestbelies that assumption. Native

American communities are far more impoverished,with far higher rates of disease, unemployment, and sui-cide, than the rest of the country. And its on Native

American lands that the most blatantly exploitativeextractive operations are concentrated. A similar obser-

vation can be made of the oil-rich Ogoni lands ofNigeria, or the Guarayo territory of Bolivia, amongscores of others.

The political inertia that has allowed colonial-eraracial distinctions to be perpetuated in the twenty-firstcentury economy has also allowed outmoded assump-tions about industrial productivity to be perpetuated.

The prevailing belief is that if we want to continue

having the rich lifestyle to which we are now accus-tomed, we have no choice but to keep on drilling anddigging in the places where we already areand, indeed,to commence new drilling in any place where moreresources can be found. If the Inuit are hunting caribouin the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), butthe war on terror and the fueling of American Hum-mers and Expeditions demands oil and theres oil under

ANWR, sooner or later the Inuit will have to stepasidewill have to forget their antiquated ways, learnto speak English, head south, and find jobs at Exxongas stations or Wal-Mart.

Such assumptions have been amply discredited,

LucGnago,REUTERS2003


11/11


though you might never know it from following themainstream news media and its conservative-domi-nated commentary. The discrediting takes several forms,each of which involves the exploding of a persistentmyth about the materials economy:

Economic growth requires increasing materials andenergy consumption.

In other words, population momentum (theunavoidable population growth of the coming yearseven with maximum stabilization policies), plus risingstandards of living across the planet, will necessarily driveup demand for raw materials. Historically, economicgrowth hasmeant soaring material consumption. Butthe idea that this link must continue assumes that theefficiency of materials use must remain constant, whichit need not. If cities were redesigned to be more com-pact, for example, the quantities of materials required

to provide housing and transport per capita could begreatly reduced while actually improving the quality ofurban life. As asphalt and gasoline use declined, so

would the psychic and physical ravages of traffic con-gestion, auto accidents, air pollution, and suburbanisolation. At the same time, growing efficiency in energyuse, both from technological advances and from changesin consumer behavior (how about trading in yourExpedition for a Prius, or your leaf blower for a rake?)could vastly reduce the per capita demand for oil or alu-minum without compromising the pursuit of happiness.For the 2 billion people who are poorest, hopes for a

better life do not have to require further impoverish-ment for those of their indigenous counterparts whoseland is being mined or deforested.

Meeting the need for increased supply of materialsrequires taking more out of the ground.

When the benefits of more efficient design and usehave been exhausted, we may indeed need to increasethe supply, at least until population has stabilized. Butto assume that the increase must come from the groundfalsely assumes that the new materials must be virgin.In the long-term ecology of the planet, nearly all mate-

rials are eventually recycled, and now we need to do thatin the short term as well. The mines of the future willbe, increasingly, the cities rather than the rainforests.

Already, in some areas, aluminum recycling has reducedthe need for bauxite mining by half.

Mining or timbering in indigenous areas is cheap.

This argument is similar to the one employed byWal-Mart, which says its economical to get poor peo-ple, who have few alternatives, to clean toilets and

wash floors for cheap wages. That thinking is just oneexpression of the more general myth that industry can

profit by not paying the externalities, or social and

environmental costs, of production. But while eco-nomic practice remains entrenched in reactionary doc-trine, moral consciousness has come a long way sincethe days when few people had any qualms about slav-ery. Exploiting cheap labor is a form of quasi-slavery,

and the hundreds of organizations dedicated to raisingpublic sensitivity to that have long since brought us pastthe point where social costs can be ignored. The truecosts of extractive industries will inexorably becomemore internalizedfor example, in requiring oil com-panies to bear the medical costs of diseases brought bytheir polluting of indigenous water supplies. As that hap-pens, the prices of oil and other raw materials will rise,and there will be more incentives to develop sustainablesubstitutionsof renewable energy for oil, of recycledmetals and wood for virgin, and of more efficient usefor more supply.

Thats not to say the mining of minerals and fuels,and the harvesting of trees, will not continue to somedegree into the indefinite future. But in a healthy econ-omy, those activities will be done with far greater care,on a smaller scale, and only in places where permissionis granted out of choice rather than compulsionand,even then, only in places where there will be no lastinginjury to any human or natural community. Ultimately,it will cost no less to site a mine in an Indian reserva-tion or rainforest than it would to site it in, say, a sub-urb of Paris or Dallas.

Ed Ayres is the editor ofWorld Watch.

AFRICAN MINERS are trapped in a system that enriches

international black markets in diamonds and gold, and

finances destructive resource wars, while keeping them and

their communities in poverty. Left: miner in the Ashanti

goldfields, Ghana. Below: diamond miner in Sierra Leone.

DylanMartinez,REUTERS2000

the hidden shame in the global industrial economy

Documents