How Much Does Globalization Ruin the Environment?

Today’s ABC news webcast interviewed an LA Times reporter who talked about the damage that is being caused to the world’s oceans. Something that caught my attention was that shipping was responsible for more than a billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions.

It made me think about all the stuff that the US imports from China (and elsewhere). How much additional environmental damage we cause simply by shipping the goods here. The most environmentally friendly production is probably the stuff that is produced close to where it is consumed.

When we were buying granite for our countertops, we got this nice black granite with flecks of silver (probably mica) that looks really nice. The woman who sold it to us told us that the mountain in China that it came from is nearly mined out. I had visions of hollowed out mountainsides. Because those mountainsides are so far away, they seem almost unreal. If the devastation was close by, we’d probably care more.

When I was going to school at the University of Oregon, I made many trips to the countryside. It is amazingly beautiful. I liked to wander around, and occasionally took a wrong turn. On a couple of these unintended journeys, I suddenly was confronted by clear cutting: where the lumber companies had cut everything down. It was horrifying, and reminded me most of all of someone with a head wound. When someone has a head wound, doctors shave the hair around the wound. In a day or two, hair grows back through the wound causing a matted, grisly, bloody mess. All around the wound is normal hair. Clearcut is kinda like that…

A couple of years back, my family and I went to the Malakoff Diggins State Park. Its the site of California’s largest “hydraulic mine.” Fancy name for a mining technique where the miners (’49ers, — gold miners) used enormous water cannons to blast entire hillsides away. The cannons shot out 5-7000 gallons per minute! The devastation was amazing. Interestingly, the practice was outlawed not because of the damage caused to the mine itself, but because of the damage caused to downstream communities. Just goes to show that if bad things don’t happen in our own back yards, we care less about them.

The park service has a link to a panoramic view off their website. Its a bit clearer in this picture I took thats on the left. I couldn’t figure out whether the erosion you see is flooding caused by the mining or the water cannons. It was mind boggling that entire hillsides could be consumed.

In the song “Clementine“, which is about a “miner, 49er” there is a line about the girl falling “into the foaming brine.” I wondered if the foaming brine was the water they blasted the hillside with.

In addition to the erosion caused by the water, chemicals were used to get the gold out of the soil. And if I remember correctly, a lot of mercury was used…

So, back to what got this started: if we rely on goods produced far away, we care less about how they are produced. And shipping them to us exacts a toll on the environment…