Hi Vanessa -

Some of my random opinions follow:

You might be a bit shocked to learn that I was involved in early petroleum
exploration just a couple hundred km northeast of Mocoa—around Yopal and Paz de
Ariporo—when I worked for Union Oil of California, back in the early 1980s. I
was an exploration geophysicist and worked on projects in Kenya, Peru, Colombia,
Venezuela, the South China Sea, Botswana, Alaska, and elsewhere. (I studied at
the top US engineering school for extractives, the Colorado School of Mines, 50
years ago.) I now call that period of my life as employed by the "Imperialist
Vanguard". I worked under the protection of the Colombian military that was
equipped by the US military. This because there were active attacks on our work
there. That was the period when international extractives workers were under
threat of kidnapping (i.e., the Sendaro Luminoso in Peru), so I traveled as a
periodisto (journalist) when I was out and about. Although my Spanish wasn't
very good, I did meet some really wonderful people. I made many portraits of the
local people, and when I was giving a report to the senior executives of the oil
company, I would show those images. This completely freaked the oil people out.

Unfortunately, there can be no copper mining without oil, so they will both have
to continue together. And without both those and thousands of other
mining/extractive processes around the globe, we would not be typing messages to
each other here. I think a 'clean transition' is a fabrication, based on what I
have observed of collective human behavior over the past decades, essentially no
one will give up what they have, and what they have is what got us to where we
are now.

What can we do about that except to admit that we are just part of a moment in
the cosmos where a Life-form evolved on a single planet and existed for a short
period of time, and then vanished.

I've been silent on the list as I am busy preparing to sell an eight hectare
property in far western Colorado where I started a project to re-wild the land
that had been heavily abused with cattle/horse raising and cleared of most
natural vegetation. I've been doing this for the past five years, since Covid,
while working full-time remote for the Colorado Geological Survey as an editor,
writer, media producer, and archivist. I am selling so that I can eventually
leave the US next year and move back to Iceland. This, given the continuing
destruction of the US system.

There are no technological solutions to the problems facing the human species.
With a global population over 8 billion people, the world cannot sustain 7
billion of those at all. It is my opinion that the extractives industry will
continue to do whatever it can to get to any/all resources until there are no
longer any left that can be gotten. Or, with a catastrophic environmental
collapse that takes the human population down, there won't be the collective
ability to operate the very complex systems of extraction and processing—that is
a downward spiral of both technological and social system failure that further
compromises human life.

I realize that me being alive in this moment is a direct result of temporary
technological control over the natural system. It is only temporary. Nature will
always win, which certainly means that homo sapiens will join the other 99.9999%
of life forms who have already gone extinct in the 4.5-billion-year history of
the planet.

As for environmental problems related to extractives, consider that there are
more than 50,000 abandoned mining sites in the US state of Colorado alone. Some
of these affect surface and/or groundwater supplies (which are otherwise
dwindling from climate change).

I think we need to manage our grief while being absolutely pragmatic about what
governments can do about any of this (nothing??!?!). Working local, valuing what
life we have in the moment, facilitating awareness of the issues among younger
folks.

The psycho-spiritual dimensions of this suffering Life are beyond all
technologies to both help or damage.

But what does it mean to even have a spiritual life these days? What does it
mean to be alive in this moment?

etc. Sry, this is a brief morning tirade. I've got to get out and continue to
work on maintenance issues before winter really hits hard.

cheers,
John

On 11/15/24 6:46 AM, Vanessa Gocksch wrote:
> Hello Rob, thank you for considering my other perspective...When I say a cry for
> help, it specifically refers to people in the south (and or Mocoa where I am
> specifically) needing help with internet security  and also more people /
> funding to support the environment issues in the South (example; against this
> mega mine for "clean transition") . Also having more living Europeans here
> serves to protect the local activists, such as is the example of Zapatistas in
> Chiapas where there is a constant flux of European activists that are present
> only as "observers" (which avoids people getting killed). Westerns working down
> here can also create more international awareness (as they are connected to
> network in the north) and bridges , bring PR / communication / promotion ideas
> and take a lot more risks with what they do in the south because they don't
> actually live here....
> If you are envisioning post oil as a democratically orchestrated move away from
> fossil fuels and into "the clean transition" with billions of solar panels and
> wind turbines adorning our planet, this big copper mine that is about to destroy
> a watershed of the amazon has everything to do with this particular post oil
> scenario.....But perhaps when you speak of  post oil you are referring to post
> civilisational collapse? Or perhaps both post options...?
>
> Wishing you a fine day.
> Vanessa

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