Miner vs hippies!

I've been meaning to write about this for a long time because it's a conversation that I have had with several tree hugging do-gooders over the years and I think that I have perfected my argument! You can imagine the set up, me standing near a bar, covered in dust after a long drive, boots covered in drilling mud, throat slightly parched while I wait for the barman to serve me an icy cold beer and Boom, the hippie turns up. You know the type, it's wearing clothes made of organic natural fibres, you know the ones that always look as if they are ten years old because, of course, they only use natural dyes... I say 'it' because with this species it is often very hard to differentiate the sexes upon first inspection and besides I wouldn't want to be a gender discriminator... It has a faint whiff of body odour interlaced with marijuana and too much body hair and suddenly notices me (Oh no!), now with beer in hand and turns and says 'Oh do you work in mining?'... To which I say 'No you fool, I'm covered in crap and wearing this drab brown khaki shirt and trousers that say 'Two bit mining company' on the large logo emblazoned upon my chest because I'm an ice cream vendor and I think the colours really suit my complexion"... Not really... What you actually say is the well rehearsed verse "Yeah, I'm a geologist with 'Two Bit Mining Company" and we're here looking for .... (insert commodity of choice)". So it begins... The hippie then says something along the lines of 'Oh so you're here to plunder the resources of x african country so that you can export them to the west and earn a fortune'... Damn straight! Well I'll try anyway...
Lets just get several things straight right from the get go. If X african country actually had the skills to find and develop their own natural resources, they would! The fact of the matter is that they do not. Which creates a need for people like me and the reasons that geologists are paid well are: A. We are professionals B. there aren't many of us; C. we work long rosters away from home in said shitty african country; D. We usually have to endure horrific climatic conditions fairly regularly as a part of our work (think Australian outback in summer) E. Said african country usually carries a whole raft of diseases and parasites or animals that can kill you (think Giardia, ticks, leaches, spitting cobras - I've had them all).
So moving swiftly along...
The reality is that mining is messy... Recovering minerals involves ripping a hole in the ground usually and the other thing about mineral deposits, the really annoying thing about mineral deposits, is that they are not discriminatory, they occur in every country, in every conceivable climate and location and many of them are in very beautiful places, places that are remote and untouched. Sorry.
The demand and prices for minerals are such that we (humanity - not miners) are able to go to even more remote places in search of them. Companies will take higher risks and work in places like Sudan (BP) and the (not so) Democratic Republic of Congo (Every major mining company). One other interesting fact is that around 4% of the earths surface is occupied by cities, my guess is that mines occupy way less than 1% of its surface...
The fundamental thing that my new found tree hugging hippy acquaintance deigns to forget is that we are surrounded by things that were ultimately sourced from the ground. Let me provide a few examples: Glass - you need a Silica source, knife and fork - stainless steel which requires Iron, Nickel and Chrome, mobile phone (insert list of metals used here - all mined) plus plastic which is usually synthesised from Oil and Gas, another extractive industry that really got the hippies going when the Gulf of Mexico disaster happened - many of them felt so strongly about this that they got on on their very environmentally friendly bicycles (also made of steel, aluminium or if they could bear to spend the money - carbon fibre - all mined) to go and protest. Bless.
Even if you converted wholly to wood, the chances are that you will need some metal implement to fashion this wood into anything remotely useful... So lets just move on. Force, through legislation, companies involved in the extractive industries to develop a corporate awareness and social responsibility and to put something back into the world from which we extract so much. Fortunately, in most parts of the world, the governments and stock exchanges which ultimately control these companies have already done this. So, my hippie friend, you are free to go back to doing whatever it is that you were doing to make yourself feel morally superior and I will go back to enjoying my beer in solitary splendour. Also - you can now start wearing real clothes and stop eating with your hands and still rest easy, but please, stop attacking the mining companies because the chances are that some big bad mining company somewhere in the world pays approximately 45% of your dole allowance...