Black Gold

The fledgling U.S.A. had begun it's wartime campaigns for independence while American explorations continued.  In 1778, Thomas Hutchins was exploring the Illinois lands. 

He was amazed at the extraordinary bounty of natural growth, animals and forests of oak, walnut, etc. with huge trees.  Even the Illinois ground was "a superior soil to any other part of North America that I have seen."

Those of us who had the pleasure of gardening in Illinois know that this natural resource has been conserved.  While erosion due to primitive farming practices took a deep toll, there remain a few places where the original soil profile exists.  Personally, during geological investigations, I measured the thickness of black loamy topsoil at 13 feet deep.  This is extraordinary.  Most places on Earth have just a few inches of topsoil.  Rarely does it have so much organic humus to be naturally black and have such depth!

USDA Three Phase Diagram of Soil Types

Much more at:

Soil Science Society of America

Surface mining destroys habitats and fisheries but also impacts and contaminates water supplies for people.  We're a part of our planet.

These two photos are mines for low-grade, filthy coal.

We're also mining oil now, scraping bottom...





The Geology of Rare Earth Elements

The Geology of Rare Earth Elements

The biggest secret is that they are not very rare.

But there is going to be a lot of destruction of habitat, mining.

Because "economically-viable" concentrations of them occur in certain soils.

Strip-mining is about to make a comeback, probably on a scale not seen since the 1950's.

Coal is also making a comeback. http://comps.fotosearch.com/bigcomps/AGE/AGE003/F36-118830.jpg

They might as well have just bombed us.

But chose to be even more destructive.

Industrial Rot

150 acres of heavy industry,

125 years heritage of industrial use,

Destroyed by a decade of greed

(outsourcing).

Industry Abandoned

Rust

never

sleeps

Ye who enter here...

 Abandon all hope,

Recent capitalistic failures beg for solutions.

There is an implicit falsehood of using money as either a metric or means by which to advance. Perhaps only as a tool to check on usefulness, it may have a role. Otherwise, generalizing Darwinism to monetary systems is highly problematic, i.e.:

http://www.public.iastate.edu/~riczw/MEGliter/econ/hedoin.pdf - while attempting to link Darwinism and natural selection to economics, the author fails miserably, which is why this is cited. Try to find any clear analogies between money theory and evolution, post them here if there are any at all.