Mining Morality: Prospecting for Ethics in a Wounded World

William P. George

doi:10.5771/9781978707931

Summary

Employing “self-sharpening tools” found in the work of theologian and philosopher Bernard Lonergan, Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato si’, and international law, William P. George brings mining to personal and collective moral awareness by “prospecting for ethics” at selected sites: (1) Butte, Montana, “the Richest Hill on Earth,” once bound to Chuquicamata, Chile, by a company that spanned two continents and nearly owned a state; (2) the tiny island nation of Nauru, called Pleasant Island until it was devastated by phosphate mining and the breaking of a sacred trust by foreign powers; (3) the deep seabed, governed by the United Nations Law of the Sea, a “constitution for the oceans” that regards much of the resource-rich seabed as humankind’s “common heritage”; (4) Africa, with its uranium mines but also its conflicts over what “being nuclear” means in the wake of colonialism, apartheid, and Hiroshima; and (5) mineral-rich asteroids speeding through space where mining rights are contested, even as space entrepreneurs look to become the world’s first trillionaires.

George introduces readers to remarkable moral miners––the women of Butte and Chuquicamata, a World Court judge from Sri Lanka, and the Rocket Boys of Coalwood, West Virginia, to name a few––and leads them to consider not only the morality of mining––what’s good and not so good about resource extraction––but also the mining of morality, a venture that Socrates called “the examined life.”

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Bibliographic data

Edition: 1/2019
Copyright Year: 2019
ISBN-Print: 978-1-9787-0792-4
ISBN-Online: 978-1-9787-0793-1
Publisher: Lexington, Lanham
Language: English
Pages: 306
Product Type: Monograph

1. Contents No access
2. List of Figures No access
3. Preface No access
4. Acknowledgments No access
1. Chapter One. Introduction: Mining and Moral Consciousness No access
2. Chapter Two. Assembling the Prospector’s Tools No access
1. Chapter Three. Butte, Montana: “The Richest Hill on Earth” and a Moral Morass No access
2. Chapter Four. Nauru: From Pleasant Island to Phosphate Plunder No access
3. Chapter Five. Seabed Mining: From Insight to International Law No access
4. Chapter Six. Uranium in Africa and Beyond: A Matter of Being and Time No access
5. Chapter Seven. Asteroid Mining: Ethics for Aliens or for Us? No access
1. Chapter Eight. From Prospecting for Ethics to Mining Morality No access
Bibliography No access Pages 273 - 286
Index No access Pages 287 - 304
About the Author No access Pages 305 - 306