Leave it in the ground

An almighty rush to dig up the ground is sweeping through Australia and other parts of the world.

Fed by the global hunger for energy, the rapid development of countries like China and India and steadily growing world population, we are in the grip of a frantic mining boom.

Mining is a daily discussion topic in Australia, which is rich in many of the world’s most needed minerals. New iron ore mines are being opened in remote parts of the country, while prospecting for coal, coals seam gas, gold and other minerals seems to be happening everywhere, often with concern and opposition from local communities.

Once, decades ago, Australia was said to be “riding on the sheep’s back” for our economic dependence on wool and other farming products. Now the talk is about the enormous wealth created by the minerals boom and the rise of mega-rich mining tycoons like Gina Rinehart, Andrew Forrest and Clive Palmer.

With this focus has come discussion about the distribution of this wealth, with the government introducing a resource rent tax to recoup some of the royalties for the benefit of the general population. The reality is that much of the wealth goes overseas and the states furthest from the most lucrative mines, where most of the population lives, struggle economically regardless of the boom. What is often left out of the discussion on mining is its most immediate cost – to the environment.

In advertisements run by the industry to shore up public support, you don’t see the scale of the gigantic holes gouged out of the earth by open-cut mines. You are not told that the earth is never the same after a mining operation, that there is no true “rehabilitation”. You are not informed about the millions of litres taken out of groundwater aquifers, or the toxic slurries that are pumped back into the ground from some mines. The digging is generally well away from population centres and so most people have no direct experience of what is going on. Driving through the coal-rich Latrobe Valley east of Melbourne you would not know that just a few kilometres from the road are massive open-cut mining holes.

Mining is underpinned by the idea that humans are separate from nature. The earth and its minerals are inert, dead, have no living connection to us, and so we take what we please. The aim is to provide raw materials to feed the engine of modern society and, if possible, make lots of money along the way. Indigenous people hold a different notion, that the land is alive and sacred and that we belong to the earth, not it to us. Nevertheless some Indigenous communities are co-opted by large corporations into accepting mining on their land with promises of jobs, schools and better roads.

If we accept that humans are separate from nature, then essentially there is no cost to our actions. But what happens when we dig out radioactive uranium? Or take iron ore from deposits left by living organisms in ancient seas? Or drill deep holes and remove the coal formed by ancient forests? I suspect it upsets balance in ways we know nothing about.

Our planet has created immense treasures in its 3 billion years in existence – treasures formed in the relationship between the atmosphere, wind, water, rocks, volcanic eruptions, shifting tectonic plates and myriad life forms. The planet’s unfolding transformations can be seen below and above the surface. In a way, we are stealing its history (which is our own history) by mining it; and we do this with no better reason in places like Australia than to support unsustainable lifestyles.

I don’t say there should be no mining, but it needs to be limited and strictly controlled. Above all, it should be informed by reality, not illusions of human dominance and separation from nature. The reality is that we are made of the very same elements we are digging out of the ground; we are formed by the earth and out of the earth, so we have to act with the utmost respect and in concert with life. In essence what we do to the planet, we do to ourselves.      

What is required is a radical shift of values, which I think is slowly occurring across the globe. Commentators like American theologian Matthew Fox talk about a creation-centred approach rather than a human-centred one. This is where we don’t negate human needs, but they are seen in the context of the needs of all beings and the planet as a whole. The old biblical maxim, “Do unto your neighbour as you would have done unto you” becomes “Do unto all life as you would have done unto you.”

The spread of environmental thinking and action across the world is a sign of this shift, but there is a very long way to go. I think the current mining mania shows a system in steady decline; often the worst aspects of a civilisation rise to the surface before there is great change. And there is hope – Gaia has undergone incredible upheavals over the aeons and its creative life essence, which is also our life essence, will go on regardless.