Thursday 13 October 2011

Top Ten Mining Blogs

The business of mining is a vexed question in the 21st century. Perhaps it has always been so...but mining is as old as human beings, almost.  In Australia, human history is at least 40,000 years old.  At this time in the 21st century, we are chopping up the country to sell resources to China and elsewhere. Yet mining on this continent is old. Aboriginal people mined for ochre.

My own view? I think we have to keep a watching brief on miners, and the investors and governments who want them to have open slather.  But I am not against mining as a human venture.  Certain mines should never have proceeded and there are some, like Jabiluka, which I never want to succeed. However, I have lived in two mining towns - Mount Isa and Tennant Creek - and they are the best places I have ever lived.  There are wonderful people under and above ground on mine sites.

So this is why I want Networkers to have a well-rounded attitude with regard to mining: to defend their communities and get stuck into resources corporations and governments when mining and miners go too far while recognising that a lot of things in our lives would not be possible if humans did not extract substances from the earth.  As part of this I want to pass on this link to a list from Oz Mining of The Top Ten Mining Blogs.

1 comment:

  1. Well I reserve the right to oppose BHP Billiton in just about everything they do, and Xstrata.
    They might produce huge profits for shareholders (and themseles), but they wreck things as they go, and set neighbour against neighbour.
    Olympic Dam is just the latest in a very long line.
    One still risk health problems swimming in Lake Buirley Griffin (in Canberrra) from an old Silver/lead/zinc mine at Captain's Flat - 50 kms away, up river.
    The mine closed when I was a child.
    Lake still contaminated.
    Cheers
    Denis

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