It is sometimes difficult, in our globalized economy, to conceptualize the connectedness of our consumer products. If, for instance, our bread contains foodstuffs from a half-dozen states and three or four countries, we can be excused ignorance of truly complicated items like computers.
It was a little sobering to recently visit an enormous copper mine in Arizona. (Copper, of course, is needed for circuitry.) It's kind of hard to represent just how enormous this production was, so here are two attempts.
First, a few pictures. The first two are satelite images, screen shots from Google; the third I took from the blue shed in the background of the tire picture above:
Now, here's a panorama with my pathetic camera:
They extract miniscule amounts of copper from all this rock a few grams to the ton, I believe. So mines have to be this big to even stay in business, even at today's sky-high prices. It's the only business model that works.
I'm trying to grow beyond knee-jerk opposition to mining. We oughtn't judge mining in the Sonoran Desert under the same criteria as mining in Armenian forests, for instance.
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