If you get rid of the cowboy environmentalists then part of the problem disappears.
A cowboy environmentalist is a person who believes science of the environment can be boiled down to three sound bytes a Suzuki.
When they close their eyes all they can see is a desert world filled with giant potholes were metal mines used to be.
If the grand canyon were an open pit mine it would take 1000 - 100,000 ton per day mines to excavate over a period of 500 years.
At any one time we don't have more than the equivalent of 105 of these size mines operating worldwide. This level alone would, if they were porphyry copper mines, supply 18 million tons of copper per year. (Our present usage of Cu) So, planet-wide, in order to excavate as much as the Grand Canyon, will take mankind about 4500 years at present rates of copper extraction.
Is this serious? I guess you have to look at in terms of land area. It equates to one very large open pit mine per 1,418,476 square kilometres. there are only 19 countries larger than that land area, so we can see that mines presently are not crowding anyone out by the total land area they occupy. In addition land that is given over to farming, pasture and cities occupies about 45% of our land available, and mines occupy about one-2500th of a percent of our total world land area, we can see that mines themselves are not a serious encroachment of useful space - forests, dwelling, farmland or other space.
What are environmentalist worried about? I don't know, but perhaps they shouldn't close their eyes.
We should take as much out of the earth as we need until we can stabilize world population, and start to get most of our metals from scrap. The world will change naturally. We need to preserve oceans, air, the continental shelf, species, fresh water, and forests. Animals and people. No question. cutting back on pollution should be a way of life. Nitrates, overfishing, oil spills, and excess production of ozone layer killing chemicals should be priorities. I see most anti pollution, green earth radicals as not understanding where most pollution comes from. It comes from where most people live and do things. Cities, and yes farms. I don't see Greenpeace or the WWF attacking farmers, city works departments and people who live in the Mississippi valley. But those people supply most of the pollution. Building farms, roads, and cities has depopulated America of most of the species habitat.
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