I THINK MINING

Funny the things that get people and societies upset and activistic.  The Alaska Assembly, meeting in Juneau, has just passed a resolution opposing the “clean water” initiatives that would in effect kill the Pebble Mine,affect Anglo American’s profits, and eventually turn Alaska into a non-mining state. 

Alaska would become like Montana: a place for only the rich and the poor: particularly the rich who make money elsewhere and the poor who work to make life comfortable for them.  Never like California where mining is essentially illegal but movies et al. keep them going–have you seen Speed Racer, a fantastic new movie from Hollywood?  Better than reading most NI 43-101 reports, although they have a similar approach to reality.    

The power play behind killing Pebble Mine is this:

Bob Gillam – probably Alaska’s richest man – doesn’t want the Pebble Mine near his vacation home on Lake Clark. He formed the Renewable Resources Coalition and spent millions on a huge and misleading advertising campaign to stop Pebble. When Gillam couldn’t get his anti-Pebble crusade through the Legislature, the Anchorage Daily News reported that he sent Rep. Jay Ramras, R-Fairbanks, to threaten the mining industry – disavow Pebble, was the message, or I will take down the whole industry with initiatives. This is it.

I wonder if Bob Gillam is an environmentalist at heart.  Is he a Republican?  Is he religious?  One of those who believe it is God’s green earth not to be sullied by holes in the ground?  Or is he just a rich person seeking peace from the ways of the world in his own private hunting lodge? 

While this earth-shattering debate on mining in Alaska is taking place, down in California where they effectively killed mining a long time ago, the courts have just ruled that gay marriage is legal under the state constitution.  I wonder what Bob Gillam thinks of that?  For if Alaska bans mining, is it then the next state to legalize gay marriage?  You know the path down that slippery slope of liberal environmentalism and anti-mining sentiment?

In Vancouver the issue of gay marriage is kind of passe: it has been legal for so many years now that nobody remembers when it started or cares now if it happens.  There is no need for policies about it in mining company staff manuals.  It seems silly to even bother about the topic.  If they can work and will work in the mining industry, get ‘em, no holes barred.  When I wondered yesterday around the BC Mining Week Fair, the focus was mining, and nobody in town cares a whit about those silly American debates about protecting hunting lodges or gay marriages. 

Come on United States: wake up to reality, come into the modern age, tell those religious nuts to butt out of people’s lives, and let us get on with mining in accordance with pre-agreed laws and regulations.  Have a valid debate about race, but do not forget that at the end of the day you have to pay the mortgage, pay down the deficit,  get out of the war, and keep mining somewhere so five percent of the world’s population can consume fifty percent of the mined products.  

Or is the truth that in a rich, consumption-driven, spoilt country, there are resources enough to go around to enable even the prejudiced and mean spirited time and energy enough to hastle others and seek to impose their views on the majority?  If that is so, then maybe they should stop mining, grow humble and kind, and look out for one another.