Drillers have to help convince public about the need for mineral

Canadian resource industries are losing a battle for public support on the environmental front, warned Tom Waterland, president of the Mining Association of British Columbia. In a spirited address to the Canadian Diamond Drilling Association, Waterland told delegates that resource industries are facing tough odds in the struggle to convince the public of the direct connection between their high standard of living and the use of primary natural resources.

“Seldom do we hear that the wealth and living standard we all enjoy must be created before it can be enjoyed. In fact, all wealth comes from the earth and the resources that are contained in, and supported by, the earth,” he said at the Association’s recent meeting in Vancouver.

“It is incredible to me that people think we can exist by informing one another, and providing services to one another, without the entire economic structure being supported by the creation of wealth from natural resources.”

But Waterland said the situation isn’t necessarily hopeless. He called upon all resource industry sectors to better understand the environmental movement sweeping North America so that energies and resources could be targeted to the “basic elements of the conflict”.

As Waterland went on to explain, much of the conflict boils down to the “ultimate generation gap” developing between those who grew up in the 1930s and 1940s (who were influenced by their parents’ reactions to the Great Depression), and those who were privileged to have been born in more recent decades of economic prosperity. Each group was “imprinted” differently and often have totally different values.

“Most of my generation were close to the resource sectors and were involved in the production of wealth-creating natural resources,” he said. “Later generations were largely raised in an urban environment in which the flow of these resources was taken for granted and the source never questioned.”

Because our population has become largely urban, Waterland said it has become commonplace to consider the hinterlands of the nation to be places for enjoyment, pleasant solitude and respite from urban pressures.

However, “harvesting timber and mining minerals negatively impacts the urban images of wildlands”, observes Waterland. “After all”, he continued, “many younger people today subconsciously think cars can be purchased from a car dealer, copper wiring from a hardware store, and lumber from a building supply store”.

“The environmental generations have so taken our wealth for granted that they have lost sight of the origin of our affluence, and blithely assume we can go merrily on enjoying wealth without continuously creating it.”

As a result, he pointed out, it becomes easy for urban dwellers to write off forestry jobs on Vancouver Island or deny wealth and jobs that could be created by a proposed mine in northwestern B.C.

Waterland said preservationists are able to get widespread public support by preaching a doomsday scenario that can be averted “only if citizens join them in a crusade to preserve the sanctity of nature’s wonders”. In many cases, animal welfare is put ahead of the basic human needs of those living in non- urban areas.

“I believe that the great mass of people swept along by the environmental movement are responding naturally in the context of general environmental concerns, many of which are valid,” Waterland said.

“The fact is that stopping (in the preservationist mind) `environmentally destructive’ resource industries sounds good in the context of contemporary environmental concern and it seems to be accepted by a generally uninterested urban public.”

Instead of battling the preservationists, many of whom are zealots, Waterland said resource industries should direct their efforts toward their power base — the average environmentally aware citizen who often falls prey to the “siren song” of the preservationists.

“We are in a struggle for people’s minds, for their understanding and their support,” he emphasized.

To accomplish this goal, Waterland stressed that all resource industry sectors should do two things — and do them well.

“First, we must do an extremely good job of resource and environmental management and demonstrate conclusively we are able stewards of our resources,” he said. “There is no room for sloppy work. We should tolerate nothing but first- class jobs of environmental management, including an intelligent sensitivity and reasonable accommodation of other resource values.

“Second, we have to convince urban people that production of, and exploration for, mineral commodities are vital to their own self interests,” he continued.

Waterland stressed that the production of minerals uses very little land, but the search for minerals requires the right to search vast areas.

“Our struggle needs to be targeted on the urban mind,” he concluded. “They must understand that if we stop producing the tools and building blocks of civilization, our global standard of living — and consequently our ability to protect our environment — will surely decline.

“Only in this way can we stop losing the battle . . . and it is indeed a battle.”