Strip Mining Mars

This is what strip mining looks like on Earth. Vast areas of the planet, especially in Russia, Africa and the United States, have already been laid waste in order to dig out metals. But of course resources are finite. And human beings, resourceful as ever, are looking to the skies.

Having devastated Planet Earth, man is now moving on to other planets. The worst news I've read in the past few weeks is that the exploration of Mars is not for any purely scientific reason. Nobody cares if there's microscopic life there, but if there's water it will make mining the Red Planet that much easier.

It will all be remotely done. No need to risk the lives of human beings at all. Just fly in the machines, set them up remotely, dig away, load the stuff up and transport it back to Earth. That way, we can keep on running our inefficient power stations, producing cars and trucks that go on spewing contamination into Earth's atmosphere. But we'll be able to power up our mobile phones and computers, heat our homes and run our factories. So it's all good. Right?

Of course, we'll also be able to go on producing enormous numbers of weapons of war, and selling them to some very dangerous regimes across the planet, just as we've been doing for 70 years. The makers of the weapons and their shareholders will do well out of this but the neglect of Earth's infrastructure will go on well into the future and all of us will pay for that neglect.

Humanity, it seems, learns nothing. We seem to have a one-track mind and the track our mind is on right now is making money. Not having a better life, doing something about poverty or curing cancer. Just storing up vast reserves of cash for a very small number of people, with poverty, ill-health and ignorance for most of us.