[Kzin]

Behind Gold's Glitter: Torn Lands and Pointed Questions
By JANE PERLEZ and KIRK JOHNSON

There has always been an element of madness to gold's allure.

For thousands of years, something in the eternally lustrous metal has driven people to the outer edges of desire - to have it and hoard it, to kill or conquer for it, to possess it like a lover.

In the early 1500's, King Ferdinand of Spain laid down the priorities as his conquistadors set out for the New World. "Get gold," he told them, "Humanely if possible, but at all costs, get gold."

In that long and tortuous history, gold has now arrived at a new moment of opportunity and peril.

The price of gold is higher than it has been in 17 years - pushing $500 an ounce. But much of the gold left to be mined is microscopic and is being wrung from the earth at enormous environmental cost, often in some of the poorest corners of the world.

And unlike past gold manias, from the time of the pharoahs to the forty-niners, this one has little to do with girding empires, economies or currencies. It is almost all about the soaring demand for jewelry, which consumes 80 percent or more of the gold mined today.

The extravagance of the moment is provoking a storm among environmental groups and communities near the mines, and forcing even some at Tiffany & Company and the world's largest mining companies to confront uncomfortable questions about the real costs of mining gold.

"The biggest challenge we face is the absence of a set of clearly defined, broadly accepted standards for environmentally and socially responsible mining," said Tiffany's chairman, Michael Kowalski. He took out a full-page advertisement last year urging miners to make "urgently needed" reforms.

Consider a ring. For that one ounce of gold, miners dig up and haul away 30 tons of rock and sprinkle it with diluted cyanide, which separates the gold from the rock. Before they are through, miners at some of the largest mines move a half million tons of earth a day, pile it in mounds that can rival the Great Pyramids, and drizzle the ore with the poisonous solution for years.

The scars of open-pit mining on this scale endure.

A months-long examination by The New York Times, including tours of gold mines in the American West, Latin America, Africa and Europe, provided a rare look inside an insular industry with a troubled environmental legacy and an uncertain future.

Some metal mines, including gold mines, have become the near-equivalent of nuclear waste dumps that must be tended in perpetuity. Hard-rock mining generates more toxic waste than any other industry in the United States, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The agency estimated last year that the cost of cleaning up metal mines could reach $54 billion.

A recent report from the Government Accountability Office chastised the agency and said legal loopholes, corporate shells and weak federal oversight had compounded the costs and increased the chances that mining companies could walk away without paying for cleanups and pass the bill to taxpayers.

"Mining problems weren't considered a very high priority" in past decades, Thomas P. Dunne, the agency's acting assistant administrator for solid waste and emergency response, said in an interview. "But they are a concern now."

With the costs and scrutiny of mining on the rise in rich countries, where the best ores have been depleted, 70 percent of gold is now mined in developing countries like Guatemala and Ghana. It is there, miners and critics agree, that the real battle over gold's future is being waged.

Gold companies say they are bringing good jobs, tighter environmental rules and time-tested technologies to their new frontiers. With the help of the World Bank, they have opened huge mines promising development. Governments have welcomed the investment.

But environmental groups say companies are mining in ways that would never be tolerated in wealthier nations, such as dumping tons of waste into rivers, bays and oceans. People who live closest to the mines say they see too few of mining's benefits and bear too much of its burden. In Guatemala and Peru, people have mounted protests to push miners out. Other communities are taking companies to court.

This month a Philippine province sued the world's fifth-largest gold company, Canada-based Placer Dome, charging that it had ruined a river, bay and coral reef by dumping enough waste to fill a convoy of trucks that would circle the globe three times.

Placer Dome, which also runs three major mines in Nevada, answered by saying that it had "contained the problem" and already spent $70 million in remediation and another $1.5 million in compensation.

Some in the industry have paused to consider whether it is worth the cost - to the environment, their bottom line or their reputations - to mine gold, which generates more waste per ounce than any other metal and yet has few industrial uses.

The world's biggest mining company, Australia-based BHP Billiton, sold its profitable Ok Tedi mine in Papua New Guinea in 2001 after having destroyed more than 2,400 acres of rainforest. Upon leaving, the company said the mine was "not compatible with our environmental values."

After tough lessons, other companies, like Newmont Mining, the world's largest gold producer, are paying for more schools and housing, trying harder to ease social problems around its mines.

"I don't think any of our members want to be associated with a bad operation - notwithstanding it would hurt their ability to open new facilities," said Carol L. Raulston, spokeswoman for the National Mining Association. "News goes around the world quickly now and there is no place to hide."

Critics say corporate miners have been cloistered from scrutiny because of their anonymity to consumers, unlike, say, oil companies, which also extract resources but hang their name over the pump.

Last year the mine watchdog group Earthworks began a "No Dirty Gold" campaign, marching protesters in front of fashionable Fifth Avenue storefronts, trying to change gold mining by lobbying gold consumers.

"They just said to ask where the gold was coming from and whether it caused social or environmental damage," said Michael E. Conroy, senior lecturer and research scholar at the Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. "The repercussions in the mining media were huge - some said it was all lies, but retailers began to realize what their vulnerability was."

Mr. Kowalski, Tiffany's chairman, has tried to stay ahead of the controversy. He has broken new ground by buying Tiffany's gold from a mine in Utah that does not use cyanide.

But the largest sellers of gold are not luxury outlets like his, but rather Wal-Mart stores, and even Mr. Kowalski, a trustee of the Wildlife Conservation Society, hesitated to call any gold entirely "clean."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/24/in...al/24GOLD.html

Nothing says "I love you" like 30 tons of cyanide-laced waste.

[FarKalkir]

Don't care. Gold shiny.

[Kzin]

Originally Posted by FarKalkir

Don't care. Gold shiny.

Plutonium is even shinier ... and more expensive ... and a woman would have to love you so much she's willing to have her finger rot off and her blood poisoned to wear a ring made out of it!

[FarKalkir]

Originally Posted by KzinKiller

Plutonium is even shinier ... and more expensive ... and a woman would have to love you so much she's willing to have her finger rot off and her blood poisoned to wear a ring made out of it!

What about silver? Do you have any horror stories about that? Or gemstones?

[Dakk]

My wife would kill an Angolan for a diamond.
Coincidentally, so would most Angolans.

[Kzin]

Originally Posted by FarKalkir

What about silver? Do you have any horror stories about that? Or gemstones?

Silver you get pretty much the same way as gold, don't you?

Gemstones ... I've seen opal mining in Australia, that's pretty cool .... and leaves behind wasted lunar landscapes, but then that's pretty much how that part of Australia looks to start with.

[Dakk]

Originally Posted by KzinKiller

Silver you get pretty much the same way as gold, don't you?

Gemstones ... I've seen opal mining in Australia, that's pretty cool .... and leaves behind wasted lunar landscapes, but then that's pretty much how that part of Australia looks to start with.

Hrm... so maybe those pictures of Welshy on the moon were fakes!

[Kzin]

Originally Posted by Dakk

Hrm... so maybe those pictures of Welshy on the moon were fakes!

Probably just a weekend in Coober Pedy.

[Sihaya]

when they mentioned Spain and the exploration period reminded me when they found "Fool's Gold." hehehe, they shipped ship fulls of it and received tiny little speckels of gold. I guess you already know, even your body has gold. I'm not much of a fan of gold but I like silver and its cheap as in price.

[Dakk]

Originally Posted by Sihaya

when they mentioned Spain and the exploration period reminded me when they found "Fool's Gold." hehehe, they shipped ship fulls of it and received tiny little speckels of gold. I guess you already know, even your body has gold. I'm not much of a fan of gold but I like silver and its cheap as in price.

Sounds to me like you're offering yourself up for exploration and drilling, AMIRITE?

[Sihaya]

Originally Posted by Dakk

Sounds to me like you're offering yourself up for exploration and drilling, AMIRITE?

Nein








lets have a quest...





















meet me in UTA's Library 10 o'clock sharp!

[Dakk]

Originally Posted by Sihaya

Nein

lets have a quest...

meet me in UTA's Library 10 o'clock sharp!

*reads message* Drat! 24 minutes too late. Meet me for lunch at PF Chang's in Fort Worth. Men's bathroom, second stall on the left

[Stryfe]

Originally Posted by Dakk

*reads message* Drat! 24 minutes too late. Meet me for lunch at PF Chang's in Fort Worth. Men's bathroom, second stall on the left

That the one with the sweet gloryhole?

[Dakk]

Originally Posted by Stryfe

That the one with the sweet gloryhole?

Except the hole goes to the first stall on the left