Letter to Iron County Reporter - Aug 22 2008

The following letter was submitted to the Iron County Reporter on 22 August 2008.

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With the recent airplane surveys over Iron County there has been some discussion about the environmental consequences of mining. Those discussions need to begin not about the suspected impact in our county, but rather about human needs. All civilized society exists because we are willing to utilize the natural resources available to us.

Think about the first human who ever picked up a nicely shaped hunk of wood and used it as a club to get his dinner. The same human probably found a cave to live in out of the weather. Both of these acts require the using of natural resources. The more natural resources humans came to use, the better we lived, right up to today. Your home, your furniture, your car, cooking, and the heat in your home, didn't just happen. They are all the results of our utilizing natural resources.

I'm not prepared to give up our harvesting of natural resources that allows our lifestyle. In fact, I would rather that humanity mines sulfite, and every other natural resource, right here in the USA where state and national governments maintain harsh standards in order to minimize our spoiling the earth. Third world nations presently have no such standards or enforcement. If we mine here in the US, then by the time we've used up our resources here, the third world will have developed and advanced socially and politically to have environmental laws and controls similar to ours in place. With over a billion people living in China, their government's primary concern is just getting everyone fed, with no energy left over for worrying about pollution, as is most of the third world.

Until the third world improves their economies, mining here in the US is the only safe way to fill our needs for minerals.