In Reply to: Re: Bird watching posted by Perry on October 25, 2005 at 16:41:33:
Another part of the problem is human vanity and crass, over-indulgent materialism. Here's just one example of that in this NYT article on the effects of gold mining.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/24/international/24GOLD.html?th&emc=th
"... 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."
"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."