The World's Most Eco Friendly Hole in the Ground

I was browsing a coal mining company's website the other day, in the interests of discretion I shan't tell you which one.  Actually I was browsing it for work and my employers would probably take a dim view of its name being broadcast on this blog where whole dozens of people might see it.  It was the usual, upbeat public relations exercise but one comment caught my eye particularly.  It was their boast that they ran an eco friendly coal mine and processing plant.

I can't help wondering exactly how much coal you might be able to extract from an eco friendly coal mine.  Let's face it when one thinks of mining the term "eco friendly" doesn't exactly leap to mind.  "Blasted deathscape" seems to be a better fit.  Allow me to assure people that I'm not anti mining, I'm far too fond of a twenty first century lifestyle for that, but neither am I under many illusions as to the environmental impact of mining.  This is basically how mining works.  Having identified a resource you blast an access road through whatever the hell is in your way until you get to the target region.  Once there you obliterate the landscape to the point whereby the surface of the moon would be more capable of supporting life, you dig a wacking big hole and then extract large lumps of the planet for transport elsewhere.  As environmentally friendly activities go mining rates just behind farming and city building.

Of course there are things the concerned mining company can do to minimise their impact.  They can build no more access roads than they absolutely need, they can exterminate all life from as small a part of the surface of the earth as is commensurate with their ability to dig up whatever it is they want and in the interests of community relations they can give a quick heads up to anyone living downstream when their tailings dam bursts and makes the water supply somewhat less capable of sustaining life than one normally expects.  All these tips and hundreds more incidentally are included in my new book "Raping the Ecology For Fun and Profit" available in airport newsagents everywhere.

Of course I'm being silly but there is no reason why mining should be a permanent blight on the landscape (unlike, for example farming or city building). While the mining itself is necessarily intrusive eventually whatever it is was mined will run out and then mining will stop.  The mining company then has the opportunity to fix thing up a bit.  They can plant some trees (if trees were an original part of the landscape and they have some lying around), they can leave their unwanted machinery in place providing a useful habitat for spiders, lizards and the smaller mammals until something a little less artificial grows back.  They can redesignate their tailings dam as a lake which makes it positively churlish for the local inhabitants to complain about the contents entering the water table.  I believe this is what they did at my father's previous place of employment.  Alternatively they can simply do their mining in the third world where nobody really gives a shit.

If they have any respect for the average intelligence of the human race a mining company probably shouldn't boast about their eco credentials on their website.  For starters there's no point in telescoping your strategy before the lawsuits start rolling in.  For second while it would be nice to think they're trying who on earth expects mining to be ecologically friendly?  From an overall point of view its probably better if the company gets in, rips out what it wants as quickly as possible and gets out again.  It might take a few centuries (or millennia) but eventually some sort of recovery will be made and it will be made all the quicker in the absence of the mining company.  I suspect the mining company in question realises this on some fundamental level because their website also made great play of their sponsorship of the local soccer team.

This is a much better tactic.  It shows the company as part of the community, cheering on the local side as they engage in healthy physical exertion (assuming they can get the time off work).  How can anybody complain about unexpected sinkholes under their houses or water that spontaneously combusts when those responsible are also the guys that helped your team to the regional championships?  Build a school and employ a couple of the locals as security guards and suddenly you're in danger of becoming a public benefactor.  If you have any sense at all it should all be tax deductible and if you emphasise your school building and community activities you might be able to get your multinational mining corporation registered as a charity or at least an NGO.  "Miners Without Borders" has a nice ring to it and isn't actually too far from the truth in any event.

If any mining companies out there are looking for a new PR consultant please feel free to give me a call.