Ethics

After attending the excellent EDO workshop this afternoon ( congratulations Committee!)I asked one of the presenters about objecting to the mine by debating the ethics of it being necessary and therefore in the "public interest".A search of gold on Wikipedia shows global production exceeding demand, the historical link between using gold reserves as a hedge against extremes of global currency variations (generally man-made I should add)becoming increasingly irrelevant, and the fact that it is estimated that all the gold ever mined is still in circulation makes one question what public interest is being served by the proposed mine.In fact, the only conclusion I can come to is that gold mining's sole purpose is to produce a mineral that caters solely for man's vanity, and to make money for the owners and shareholders.Any product for which gold is essential could easily be provided for from existing stocks.
One could argue that a massage achieves the same end result, but that is hardly likely to impose the same environmental damage on the community that a goldmine will.
To see what others think, I have posted this matter on the website for the St James Ethical Centre in Sydney. It will be interesting to see the response.