Too many communities and ecosystems have become casualties of the reckless disregard shown by the mining industry’s false promises of benefits, insincere guarantees of safety, and willful neglect in the name of profits realized elsewhere.

This industry should be given zero leeway or benefit of doubt, as it has shown refusal to undertake practices that would allow even a flimsy pretense of safety and responsibility to be assumed in regards to the lasting effects of their large-scale mines. This is an industry that, when challenged to provide evidence of a large-scale mining operation that did not have environmental impacts orders of magnitude worse than the projections used in securing permits, can not produce one example. 

Industrial gold mining is over. It should be banned. Choosing regulation as an approach should now be seen as a frivolous sacrifice of land and communities on the alter of a parasitic industry seeking a long-since-stripped subterranean El Dorado.

The damage inflicted by these operations is inversely proportional to the diminishing trace amounts of gold that still exist below the surface of our planet. In a real sense, it is our blood they are squeezing from the stones beneath and around our homes. People will be poisoned. Established modern history of mining precludes debate around this fact. Citizens have a right to be free from this Toxic Trespass, and it is the responsibility of their legislators to codify this protection.