Historical Image of the Day

Hydraulic mining, Marin County, California, 1908

Historical Image of the Day

Little Johnny Mine, Leadville, Colorado, 1941

Historical Image of the Day

Child labor in a coal mine, Pittston, Pa, 1911

Historical Image of the Day

Farmington Mine Disaster, West Virginia, 1968

Historical Image of the Day

Inside the Anaconda Mine, Butte, Montana. No date, but I'm going to guess around 1900.

Historical Image of the Day

The mining boom town of Deadwood, South Dakota, 1888

Historical Image of the Day

Hydraulic mining, Nevada County, California, 1866

Fight Song for the Ages

Just in time for football season, I have learned the Colorado School of Mines fight song from the 1930s.

"Now here we have the mining man
In either hand a gun
He's not afraid of anything,
He's never known to run;
He dearly loves his whisky,
He dearly loves his beer;
He's a shooting, fightin',
Dynamitin', mining engineer."

Not sure if they put that to music or not.

Historical Image of the Day

Navajo uranium miners, 1956

Images of Modern Gold Mining

Sociological Images has a wonderful post up displaying images of modern gold mining. Here's a couple of examples.

Historical Image of the Day

Rock Springs Massacre, 1885. Even after the Exclusion Act, anti-Chinese ideology drove politics in the West. In Rock Springs, Wyoming, racism combined with labor activism, as the railroad was paying Chinese less than whites. White labor responding by destroying the Chinese community, killing at least 28 Chinese miners.

Around Latin America

-The Honduran Supreme Court has appointed a judge to investigate a prosecutor's filed case against the military for its role in forcing Manuel Zelaya from the country on June 28. No warrants can be issued until the judge rules on the filing. That may sound nice, but given that this is the same Supreme Court that upheld the illegal removal of Zelaya, I don't think much will come from this. Still, if something is to happen, it has to start somewhere.

-Additionally, the Micheletti regime is apparently broke: "The Finance Minister for the de facto government, Gabriela Nuñez announced today that she does not currently have access to sufficient funds to pay government employees for January. It all boils down to cash flow. She said she has access to about 400 million lempiras, and needs a total of about 1,500 million lempiras. In addition, she noted that the government has run up large debts with suppliers, including 450 million lempiras for medical supplies, and a further 700 million lempiras owed to road construction and paving contractors." I don't know to what extent international reaction to the coup and reduction of financial support has played a role in this, but I suspect it must be at least somewhat significant, and nothing less than what the Micheletti has brought upon itself.

-Is Peru's economic star rising in Latin America? A road between Peru and Brazil and a growth in GDP of 9.8% last year indicate Peru may be in for a brighter future.

-Not as bright for Peru's future: illegal gold mining in Peru's Amazonian basin is causing long-term environmental damage : "it takes about five grams of mercury to extract a gram of gold. That mercury is usually tossed overboard, poisoning one of the world’s most biodiverse rain forests. And Borian’s form of mining is among the most benign. Illegal cartels with heavy equipment clear-cut and mine huge areas of virgin forest, alarming environmental activists."

-In response to Mexico City legalizing abortion, surrounding states are making it increasingly difficult to obtain an abortion in the rest of the country:

In response to a Mexican Supreme Court ruling in August 2008 upholding a Mexico City law permitting abortion during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, 17 of 32 Mexican states have approved amendments to their constitutions declaring that life begins at conception and granting legal rights to fetuses, the Chicago Tribune reports. Veracruz, which in November 2009 became the most recent state to enact an antiabortion-rights amendment, has called on the federal government to consider adding a similar amendment to the national constitution.

It's hard to be surprised by this. Anti-choice sentiment stemming from conservative social values and Catholicism made any kind of response in Mexico likely. Still, this particular response from other state governments, and the pressure for a national law banning abortion, is very unfortunate. While each state can do what it wants (in the same way the D.F. can and did), it would be very bad of there were a national law enacted in Mexico.

-According to Venezuela's state-run National Electric Corporation, the country could be facing a major power outage nationwide in the next 3-4 months if water levels in the reservoirs continue to drop. Weather is funny, so there's no way of predicting accurately what will happen in that time period; still, power loss for an entire country would be tough to deal with politically, socially, or economically.

-While the recent massive rainfall in Brazil has led to the deaths of dozens, it may have the opposite effect in terms of agricultural production, as "Brazil’s coffee crop may beat the 48.48 million bag record this year, the country’s crop supply agency said in a report which also raised forecasts for the newly-begun soybean harvest."

-Finally, Lula is expected to decide soon which company he will contract for the a $4.4 billion U.S. dollar fighter jet order. In addition to Boeing (a U.S. company), France's Dassault and Sweden's Saab are in consideration. If Boeing is selected, it would create thousands of jobs for the struggling U.S. economy, a fact that didn't deter Republican Senator George LeMieux from doing all he could to damage U.S.-Brazil relations prior to the approval last week of Thomas Shannon as ambassador to Brazil.

An Eventful Week in Brazil: Argentine Agreements, Challenging China, and a Major Court Ruling in Indigenous Rights

Brazil and Argentina met this week to re-affirm their economic and political relations. The meeting itself sounded innocuous enough - standard diplomatic promises to "iron out" some minor trade issues over things like import licenses on shoes and textiles (exciting!), as well as Brazil signing a deal with Argentina to help with the recent nationalization of Aerolineas Argentinas.

While that all seems minor enough, the language on China coming out of a business leaders' meeting between reps from both countries during Presidents Kirchner's visit was far more interesting. It's no secret to anybody that China has become a growing power in trade with Latin America. However, not all that trade is good, even for Latin America, as it has also been flooded with inexpensive products that undercut national economies in South and Central America, and reps from that meeting between the two countries didn't pull punches in mentioning China's role in the hemisphere, either commenting:

“The objective now is to fight against the common evil, Chinese products which are sold at dumping prices[...] With bilateral differences back on the right track, we must address the outside enemy."

That's some pretty tough talk there for an issue that hasn't really come up yet. Of course the Argentine and Brazilian business leaders who met have their own interests to defend, and Chinese products no doubt cut into their market somewhat. Nonetheless, even if criticisms of Chinese products undercutting local companies in South America seems fair enough, referring to China as "the outside enemy" raises eyebrows a bit. If this had come from Kirchner's or Lula's mouth, it would be even more shocking and newsworthy, but even as it stands right now, it does hint at future issues facing Latin American economies as they try to increase relations with China without having their own national companies and economies being undermined by cheaper Chinese products.

Also in Brazil, the Supreme Court refused to split up an indigenous reserve half the size of Belgium in the Amazon. White farmers had insisted it was too much land for the twenty-thousand indigenous inhabitants, while logging, mining, and agricultural companies had said the reservation's existence (required in the 1988 constitution) was "an obstacle to growth."

This is a major victory for indigenous rights and the environment in Brazil, and I have absolutely no sympathy for either the farmers nor the corporations. The damage farmers, miners, loggers, and agribusiness have caused in the Amazon is already irreparable, and the cycle probably won't end without measures like the court's ruling. While indigenous people will still obviously need to cultivate the land in ways they seem fit, and while I hate essentialist notions of indigenous peoples as being "in harmony" with the earth, I think it's a fair bet that they will manage the forest in the reserve better than logging and mining companies do - hell, by simply not clearing hundreds of acres a month, they'd be managing the environment better than the corporations. It's also a huge victory for re-affirming indigenous rights in Brazil, which often go unheeded in a society that considers itself a wide spectrum of racial mixture, but which often leaves indigenous peoples out of the equation in the present even while acknowledging their past.

The ruling won't just make all of the entanglements and problems go away. Violence will persist, and even some indigenous peoples don't like the ruling and feel it perpetuates racist stereotypes by trying to keep the indigenous communities "cut off from modernity." Nonetheless, the importance of this legal precedent cannot and should not be ignored, either. The Constitution of 1988 said that indigenous peoples were to get their traditional lands back, and when the businesses and farmers, miners and loggers, pushed and pushed, trying to effectively undo the constitution, the Supreme Court has ruled that the Constitution stands, and the reserves cannot be split up. And that alone is a major step for indigenous rights in Brazil. We can only hope it leads to real gains for the communities, the environment, and Brazil overall.

Free Market Water is a Crime

This article about the death of a Chilean community from polluted water and drought is another example of the morally bankrupt idea that water should be bought and sold on the free market. This idea, implemented in Chile under the Chicago school economists under Pinochet, has led to communities losing their water and wealthy corporations, particularly mining companies, getting water. Free market water threatens to cause huge problems in the U.S. West in coming years, as the likelihood of increasing drought and the incredibly complex system of water rights in this country will lead to massive litigation, headaches, and thirst for communities throughout the region. This idea reached its apotheosis in the late 1990s when the Bolivian government, under pressure from the IMF, granted Bechtel the water rights to the city of Cochabamba. Bechtel then raised rates to first world levels, leading to gigantic protests that helped send Evo Morales to power.

Now, one might question whether people should live in the Atacama Desert in the first place. But that's for another day. What matters here is that in a world where clean water is increasingly scarce, free market true believers have set up systems that allow people to thirst so that multinational corporations and corrupt governments can rake in the cash.

Of course, the Codelco, the world's largest copper mining corporation and the polluter of the town's water, denies any responsibility. Very believable.

One of Gabon's Natural Preserves Under Threat (with Bonus Racist Colonialist Terminology from the New York Times)

There's a lot that's disturbing about this article: the threat to Gabon's (allegedly) nationally-protected forests and the damming of one of its more impressive waterfalls; the ways in which reliance upon oil for the nation's income are threatening the environment as president Omar Bongo promotes iron ore mining; the fact that Bongo has been president since 1967 (forty years!); the expectation that ecotourism will be your economic salvation without any of the extremely complex and involved infrastructural development and planning the ecotourism industry requires; the extremely understaffed park rangers, who in no way could protect much of the park when they are only 15 people. All of these are very serious issues, and I have very little hope for Gabon on this issue, especially given the economic straits it is facing and the general disregard the Chinese seem to be showing for the environment in this case (which, unfortunately, has been all too common a theme among development projects).

I also realize it's probably one of the least important aspects of the article, but the New York Times' editors most certainly should have done a better job editing Polgreen's report. Gabon is coming off bad enough as it is; there's no need to use words like "wily" to describe president Bongo, and passages like "In neighboring countries, impoverished hordes have razed and burned their forests to plant crops and make charcoal. They have slaughtered the gorillas, elephants, chimpanzees and hippos in jungles for meat. But the Gabonese flocked to cities, living in comparative splendor," while perhaps factually correct, also rely on some of the poorest choices of words to describe residents of Africa (or anywhere else) in sweeping generalities. Unfortunately, talking to people who are quite familiar with the Times' reports on Africa, this is about par for the course.

Historical Image of the Day

Miners coming out of mine shaft, Virginia City, Nevada, 1867.

I've decided that for the time being, I am going to have weekly themes for the images. In part, the images serve as a photo archive I can draw on for my teaching. Some areas I have a ton of photos for, others I have too few. So I am going to try and even it out this way.

These particular photos will be a series of Americans at work. They come from a series at the National Archives website you can look at here. I'll run this series for the next week and a half, since it makes sense to start a new set on Sunday or Monday and because I think there is great value looking at photos of work.

Lithium: Unintended Environmental Consequences of Green Technology

The reality of all green technologies is that there is an environmental cost to developing them. Any kind of consumption that includes putting something together in a machine means that resources have to be gathered from somewhere. One of the most popular green technologies is cars that run on lithium batteries. This is a much better and cleaner alternative to fossil fuels.

But where does lithium come from? What do we have to do to get it? What are the environmental costs of acquiring lithium? And how much is there in the world? These are all key questions we need to be asking as we develop these technologies.

This very interesting Times article shows that the world's largest known lithium reserves are under the Uyuni Salt Flats of Bolivia. There are several tricky issues to acquiring these resources. First is Evo Morales' determination to get Bolivia off of resource exploitation and to ensure a fair profit for his people if foreign companies do develop resources.

I'd like to focus on another issue though. The salt flats are the entrance to one of the world's great wildernesses, the altiplano of southwestern Bolivia. Having visited here last summer, I can say that I have never been more isolated in my life. This is an amazing, rugged, and almost totally unpopulated place. For most people, the appeal of the 4 day tour of the area is the salt flats. This is the center of the small but growing Bolivian tourist industry.

Mining this lithium would have untold effects on the salt flats and would go a long ways to destroying the tourist industry. The leading argument Bolivians might make for the mining is that it would provide jobs and help pull them out of poverty. If this were in fact true, it's a legitimate argument. But multinational mining corporations are not exactly known for their labor or environmental standards, and while they might provide jobs, if they are jobs like they provide everywhere else in the world, it's hard to see people's lives improving. On the other hand, if the minerals are nationalized and any agreements ensure labor rights, it's something to consider.

This gets at the core question of environment vs. jobs. This is a false question though. An active tourist industry would provide lots of jobs for people--it's about all going on in Uyuni right now. With better infrastructure and strong national leadership, it's certainly possible that Bolivia could turn itself into an international tourist destination that might make more money than lithium mining.

But then, don't we want that lithium for our "green" cars? Is the sacrifice of this beautiful, remote, and surreal place worth a new consumer technology that is supposed to solve many of our problems? I am skeptical because I don't believe technology can solve our problems and that the mining of lithium will have unintended social and environmental consequences that will severely detract from whatever positives it may provide. And like many minerals, there are limited supplies on the earth and a widespread conversion to lithium to power our cars will create "peak lithium" on the same level as "peak oil" very quickly.

Leadville

I want to recommend Dan Frosch's article in the Times about mine water in Leadville, Colorado.

Leadville is one of the most disturbing places in America. It is an old mining town that still holds on to that identity today. In the late 19th century, as a silver boom sprung up in the town, Leadville was one of the largest cities in Colorado. Oscar Wilde performed there. It seemed like the town would rise to great heights. But then the boom ended and poverty set in.

But residents struggled with more than just poverty. They also dealt with massive environmental problems. Tailings piles dotted the city and were favorite places for kids to play on. Those tailings piles were covered in lead and other heavy metals and toxins.

Every now and again, out of the mines would belch tons of toxic water. Usually that water would would more or less stay in the mines but eventually it would get caught behind some old mine equipment, fallen timbers, or other obstacles, until the pressure grew to great and it would break the obstruction. Then, a flood of orange and red water would rush into the Arkansas River, causing fish kills for miles and poisoning the river as far away as Pueblo, about 100 miles away.

Eventually, the Environmental Protection Agency got involved, declaring the whole town a Superfund site in 1983. You would think that the local residents would appreciate someone coming in to clean up this poison. You would be quite wrong. Rather, the residents took EPA cleanup efforts as an attack on their mining heritage. The EPA brought some of this on themselves. Annoyed by a lack of cooperation from locals, they sent out a flyer to Leadville homeowners saying they were going to go in and replace their lawns, which of course really pissed off the locals. Then, at a public meeting, EPA scientists explained how children playing on tailings piles could cause slower mental growth. Rather than stopping their kids from playing on the piles, Leadville residents got angry because, after all, "We played on those piles! Are you calling us stupid?" The first picture above is of tailings piles from the Matchless Mine, just above Leadville.

Finally, after more than 15 years of lawsuits, meetings, and intense fights, the EPA managed to clean up Leadville to a reasonable extent. They moved most of the in-town tailing piles to a giant pile just outside of town. They tried to capture as much of the water as possible before it reached the Arkansas. Today, you can see some of this water. If you go above Leadville, you run into what they call "wedding cakes." These are rather poorly conceived capped tailing piles that are safe, but look really stupid. They were supposed to capture the look of the old historic tailings piles. They don't. Anyway, near them are little ponds. They are called "merlot ponds." Why? Because the water is the color of red wine. It's really scary. The picture at the top is of a merlot pond. Unfortunately, it comes from the Free Republic website, but it's all I could find.

It's impossible to capture all the water. There are so many old mine shafts underneath Leadville that are filled with chemicals and other mining-related nastiness. It is this water that's about to explode out of the mine shafts and flood the town before draining into the Arkansas.

Of course, most of the residents of Leadville don't want to talk about this. I can't emphasize enough what a strange town Leadville is. The only comparison I can make is Butte, Montana. Both of these places are mining towns through and through. The residents have never wanted to admit that mining is dead. They resist outsiders and any economic diversification. Finally, in recent years both Butte and Leadville have begun welcoming tourists. They are both potential markets for real estate booms because they are in beautiful mountainous locations, although they are both deeply scarred by mining and are basically environmental catastrophes. But this economic transformation hasn't happened yet. Now that they economy is tanking, it could be a long time.

However, I recommend having a couple of drinks at the Silver Dollar Saloon, mentioned in the article. Not only is it a funky old place, but drinks at nearly 11,000 feet have an extra effect.

Obama Panders to Nevada Voters

In one of most annoying attempts at pandering so far this election cycle, Barack Obama has come out against changing the General Mining Act of 1872. This is nothing more than a blatant attempt to appeal to voters in the Nevada primary. Obama claims, ''What is clear to me is that the legislation that has been proposed places a significant burden on the mining industry and could have a significant impact on jobs." This is hogwash. Obama is simply repeating typical industry anti-tax propaganda. So long as the minerals are there, people are going to mine them. Paying a 4 to 8% surtax is not going to make much of a difference.

Obama is showing a marked lack of principle here. The 1872 Mining Act is one of the nation's worst laws. Environmentalists have been fighting it for decades. It allows mining companies to rape the land and pay next to nothing to the government. When mining companies stake a claim, they have to pay about $5 an acre to the government. It doesn't matter how much gold, uranium, silver, or whatever is underneath. $5 an acre. It amounts to the nation giving away its minerals to private companies for free.

Why does such a stance work in Nevada? I would argue that Nevada, particularly outside of Las Vegas, is right there with Wyoming as the most western of the western states. A lot of Nevada's residents both support the mining industry and think they can get rich by staking claims themselves. They think that when they hit it big, they don't want to pay a bunch of money to the government. Of course, none of them are going to hit it rich. It's like the lottery. But it still drives a lot a westerners' mentalities. Nevada also is the nation's biggest gold producing state and is a leader for many other minerals as well.

The House passed a bill last week reforming this absurd law. Bush has promised to veto the measure. It won't get that far anyway because Harry Reid opposes it as a good Nevadan.

I highly recommend this 2001 Seattle Public-Intelligencer article about the Mining Act. It provides an excellent overview of the insane giveaway of public land to mining companies, the wealth made off mining, and the environmental cost.

I have a hard time taking Obama seriously on environmental issues at this point. Reforming the Mining Act should be a fundamental issue for any candidate who is environmentally minded. But I guess theoretically offending Nevada voters is not worth it. He could have at least sat the issue out rather than pander to the worst political leanings of the American West.

Historical Image of the Day

California gold miners, circa 1850