Mining sucks, we suck, things just suck.

Trey’s mini lecture on divestment made me think of the mining sites that already plague Alaska, and made me sick. Here’s a little map of some of its existing major mining sites –

It was only today that the Alaska Dispatch News disclosed a long-awaited victory for Alaskans – the Alaska Supreme Court finally unanimously decided to overturn the 2011 Superior Court decision to create Pebble Mine.

Some background information about the mine:

The video basically explains a completely absurd proposal to create a quarter mile deep, six mile wide dam to hold all the waste for the mine, which was predicted to be the largest gold mine in the world and fifth largest copper mine – all of this beside beautiful Bristol Bay and its wildlife. You've all probably heard that there's this nasty element called arsenic, the main component of rat poison; whelp, I'm also a science major and know that this happens to be the 20th most abundant element in Earth's crust, and is a major byproduct of copper mining. It's pretty simple: the water is contaminated, the fish die (keep in mind Alaska is one of the world's superabundant fisheries), and the fishers are left with no means of income. Or worse, arsenic contaminates the fish, and thus the food supply of locals and everyone else who happens to consume it. In one touching statement from the YouTube video, a local fisherman said, "If we were to lose our fish because of the mine, where else would we turn? They only care about money, money, money. Sick. What's gonna happen to our kids?" Mining corporations, as well as drilling corporations like Shell, devalue the local economy to a point of destruction. Disregard and narcissism somehow dominate the obvious ruination of each person whose generations have occupied Alaska for "10,000 years, while the Pebble people claim they'll be around for 50" (this was stated during the foreboding years prior to the decision from the Alaska Supreme Court).

The proposal for Pebble Mine continued for a very long time, despite the 80% of local Alaskans opposition to it. I think the planning for the mine began in 2009? So, it took America a whopping six years to figure out how shitty it would be to put this huge toxic pile not even a thousand feet ABOVE Bristol Bay? The fact that the measure was overturned should give me hope that Shell won’t be able to drill in Alaska, but on the flipside, the time it took to make that happen terrifies me. It’s given that Alaska needs money and has the resources to do so, but it seems like it would be simple to choose the lesser of two evils.