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| Gold panning during the California Goldrush in 1849 |
It was not my intention to make this blog political, but developments have made it so. Although Congress has defunded the recent land grab by the Department of the Interior the events leading up to the recent actions still prevail. By their lights what they were doing was considered good; unfortunately the Road to Perdition is paved with good intentions.
The real problem is an ever widening chasm between town and country that has affected the mining industry for centuries. Agricola devoted the first chapter of his book, Re de Metallica to this problem, his book was written 500 years ago. The problem has existed for hundreds of years. The solution to this problem is education; for the past half century it has been taught in our schools that mining is unfriendly to the environment, and in many cases it has been. For the most part the general public’s perception of the mining industry has been negative.
It doesn’t make any difference whether you are a major mining company or a weekend prospector it behooves you to make an effort to try to change the public’s perception of the mining business. I know that there are several trade organizations that are trying to reach out to the public about the mining industry, but in many cases it appears that what they are doing is “Preaching to the choir.”
If some serious effort isn’t made to change the public’s perceptions about the mining industry you can be sure this isn’t the only effort to block the mining industry because those trying to do so will be back with another scheme.