UPPER PENINSULA DIARY: SULFIDE MINING ON THE YELLOWDOG & LAND MINING ON THE EUPHRATES

“Since barbarism has its pleasures it naturally has its apologists.”
-- George Santayana, “The Life of Reason,” 1905-6

POLITICS

Recall that the 1997 Ottawa treaty banning land mines, a pact rejected by a small cohort of military powers, including the United States, was meant to protect innocent civilians from harm after the battles were fought. Now comes a Dublin conference proposal that would ban cluster munitions. The term “cluster munitions” refers to aerial guided weapons that contain hundreds of bomblets that remain lethal long after their initial release. They were deployed in the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and by Israel in its temporary occupation of Lebanon in 2006. According to Amnesty International and other Human rights organizations, children playing with these unexploded bomblets account for one in four of the casualties. Countries opposed to the ban include, the US, China, Russia, Israel, India, Pakistan, and Brazil.

Bush administration spokesman, Tom Casey of the state department, said “Cluster munitions have demonstrated military utility…their elimination from US stockpiles would put the lives of our soldiers at risk.” What’s key here is the American moral hierarchy on how human life is valued, positions non-Americans, and, more insidiously, children and civilian lives, as having a lesser worth than us.

Speaking at the Dublin conference on Tuesday, Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat, and chairman of the senate Judiciary Committee, said this: “The first task of our next president will be to reintroduce America to the world. We need to reject the ‘Us versus them’ unilateralist approach that has so diminished our image and our leadership.”

What, America’s image, diminished? Preposterous!

THE ENVIRONMENT

UPPER PENINSULA DIARY: SULFIDE MINING ON THE YELLOW DOG PLAINS

The modern sulfide mining process pulverizes solid rock and exposes it to chemical processes that facilitate the extraction of the desired metal. Nickel, for instance. It’s really quite simple, take the nickel and leave the rock. What’s the big deal? Okay, so there’s a big hole in the ground, and it looks bad; but given the small area mined this is a small price to pay for the boon to the surrounding area. Big Bay, for instance.

Here’s the problem. Imagine yourself holding a rock in your hand about the size of a baseball. The exposed area is about 30 square inches. Throw it in a puddle, river, or lake, and what happens? Not much. Slowly, over a long, long period of time the rock will eventually dissolve. Why, because this is nature’s way. Normal chemical reactions erode the rock according to natural physical laws. Mineral bearing ores in solid rock erode slowly, and pose no threat to the environment.


Imagine that same rock, however, crushed into a fine powder. Now we measure the rock’s surface area in acres rather than inches. Also, the normal chemical reactions involving the minerals in the pulverized rock will be greatly accelerated by the manmade alterations to that rock.


In sulfide mining, after the pulverization and extraction of the desired nickel, other problems, like the residues of sulfuric acid and other toxic heavy metals, pose dangers to the environment that aren’t easily predicted. Different animals have varying reactions to
Toxic exposure. Salmon, for instance, die from much lower concentrations of copper than do other animals.

What, you may ask, is the connection between sulfide rock and sulfuric acid? Exposing sulfide rock to air (oxygen) and water (H2O) invariably results in a chemical reaction that produces massive amount of sulfuric acid. Sulfuric acid is used in manufacturing automobile batteries.

One last point: Sulfide mining also requires that massive quantities of other dangerous toxins be shipped in, such as sodium cyanide, which further exacerbates the dangers to the ecosystem. Why, because these toxic carcinogens must be transported in, put to use, and inevitably left behind.

SUGGESTED READING: "The Buzzards Have Landed," Roscoe Churchill with Laura Furtman

Best Regards – Randall the Vandal

PHOTO: Potential child victims of land mines.