Chapter 6: Scrapping Mining Dependence

Payal Sampat

If an accountant were to weigh the costs and benefits of extracting minerals from the Earth and then processing and refining them, the balance sheet would reveal this: an industry that consumes close to 10 percent of world energy, spews almost half of all toxic emissions in some countries, and threatens nearly 40 percent of the world's undeveloped tracts of forest. Mining is also the world's most deadly occupation: on average, 40 mine workers are killed on the job each day and many more are injured.

Today, minerals are extracted and consumed in enormous quantities: in 1999, some 9.6 billion tons of marketable minerals were dug out of the Earth, nearly twice as much as in 1970. The amount of wastes generated in order to extract these mine, three times more gold sits in bank vaults, in jewelry boxes, and with private investors, than is identified in underground reserves.

• Minerals Inventory
• Ecosystems, People, and Mines
• Tailing the Money
• Digging Out