[miningmx.com] – FOR a guide as to how mining ranks in the popular consciousness, it’s possibly worth taking a look at how the sector is represented in the film industry. The answer is, in short, very poorly.
Asked to summon the rankest of human activities; that which typifies potential for cruelty and injustice, Hollywood’s directors have frequently opted for mining as backdrop.
Look no further than “Avatar’, the James Cameron blockbuster than had the ruthless colonisation of the a distant utopia called Pandora, mined for its unobtanium – an clever descriptor of mining’s seeming insatiable appetite for resources that are, eventually, finite.
(Forget for a fleeting moment that Cameron subsequently invested in a company that wants to extract minerals from the asteriod belt, along with Google’s Larry Page and Eric Schimdt).
For civil discontent generated by mining, look no further than the filmic proxy “Blood Diamond’ whilst the UK’s “Brassed Off’ and its American parallel story “Tap Dogs’ give vent to how mining communities struggle when the mines die.
“Total Recall’, the 1990 Arnold Schwarzenegger hit again takes only the most desperate of earth’s population to Mars which is home to the mining colony of Cohaagen.
In reality, the world’s leading economies spending hundreds of millions of dollars sending vehicles into space so as to finally understand the universe’s mysteries.
Hollywood has simply no truck with philosophical or scentific pondering: the only reason for man in space is to make money and what better means than the rapacious appetite of mining.
