View from the West History shows that mining is sustainable

Sustainable development is “meeting the needs of the present, without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs,” according to Our Common Future, a report issued by the World Commission. Some sectors of the public claim that mining is not sustainable because a mine, being a depleting asset, will be exhausted and forced to close over a number of years.

Yes, a single mine has a limited life, but the mining industry started and has grown from 400 millennia ago when hunter-gatherers first began combining wood and stone to make weapons and tools. About 200 millennia ago, roughly about the time human beings began to use fire, they also began to shape weapons and tools, a practice continued and expanded today.

Metals became important to civilization when the Age of Metals was ushered in about 4000 B.C., probably in eastern Europe when smelting was first carried out on simple metal-bearing ores.

During the early Bronze (or Copper) Age more than 4,000 years ago, Ireland became a major source of gold and silver, and by 1500 B.C. the skills of metallurgy were firmly established, producing copper weapons as well as gold and silver ornaments for home and export. The English words “mine” and “mining” come from the old Celtic word mhian.

About 1000 B.C., iron began to increasingly replace bronze and long before the Christian era, gold, silver, copper, iron, lead, tin, mercury, coal and several varieties of precious and semi-precious stones were well known and widely used. Civilization as we know it would grind to a halt without mines.

It is abundantly clear that the mining industry is sustainable with different regions over the years, making their contribution to the betterment of civilization. Each successive generation of what has evolved into the industrialized nations has discovered enough of our hidden mineral resources to provide the mining products required to meet its needs.

This need has in part been met in more recent times by recycling, which accounts for about 25-60% of annual production of the common base metals and silver. Virtually all of the more valuable commodities such as gold and platinum group metals are still in use.

Can the need of ensuing generations of Canadians and other industrialized nations continue to be met? What about the needs of, and our obligations to, the have-not nations? The supply of common metals and other materials required by man in the earth’s crust is almost limitless, dependent only on a combination of commodity prices, technology, discovery rates and government policy. Our needs probably can be met by maintaining the status quo but in order to meet the needs of the less fortunate citizens of the world, more — not less — will be required.

Geologic processes long since ended distributed within the earth’s crust the metallic and non-metallic commodities of value to our industrialized world. The physical resources present in British Columbia, and for that matter the world, are fixed. The direct costs associated with their exploration development and production are largely beyond the control of governments.

But governments can and do influence, via taxation and environmental and other regulatory policies, the progress of resource development and consequently the contribution the mining sector makes to the economy. Government policy is the only major variable with which we have to work.

If we want to sustain the mining industry, and I think people of reason will agree that this would be a good and necessary government policy, we must continue to make available for mineral exploration as much land as possible. When successful, exploration leads to development and mine production to become part of an industrial sector which in British Columbia occupies less than one-tenth of 1% of the province.

We live in a changing world — the only constant in the world is change. Integrated resource management, equitable mining and environmental laws combined with an informed public and government/industry co-operation are needed to ensure that the changes that will come to our land base benefit society as a whole while minimizing the long-term effects on the environment.