Mining in Tibet imperils one billion
Adventure travel writer Michael Buckley calls the current desecration of the Tibetan Plateau by occupying Chinese as a disaster of Biblical proportions. BC BookWorld will feature a review of his forthcoming book, Meltdown in Tibet (Raincoast $31.50), in November.
September 02nd, 2014
Canadian mining companies are complicit in the mining, pollution and environmental damage.
With the arrival of the train in Tibet, large-scale mining of lithium, gold, copper, lead, crude oil, natural gas and other resources is under way to feed China’s voracious industrial sector.
None of this benefits Tibetans. In fact, mining pollutes drinking water and kills the livestock. According to Michael Buckley, the degree of environmental damage is viewable on Google Earth.
In a nutshell, one way or another, over a billion people will be seriously affected by Chinese mining and megadams in the Tibetan Plateau—a figure that includes Chinese downstream on the Yellow and Yangtse Rivers (leading to Yangtse Delta and Yellow River Delta).
The major trans-boundary rivers that will be impacted by China’s dam-building and mining are the Mekong, the Salween (starting up with string of megadams now), and the Yarlung Tsangpo which runs from Tibet through Bangladesh and India (with start-up of five new megadams in Tibet, as well as extensive mining close to the river).
The subtitle of Buckley’s book is China’s reckless destruction of ecosystems from the highlands of Tibet to the deltas of Asia.
978-1-137-27954-5
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