> This is the reality of twenty-first-century resource exploitation: reducing vast quantities of rock into granules and chemically processing what remains. It is both awe inspiring and disturbing. One risk is that the cyanide and mercury used in the method could escape into the surrounding ecosystem. After all, while miners like Barrick insist they follow all the rules laid down by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), campaigners warn that pollution often finds its way out of the mine. Indeed, a few years earlier the EPA had fined Barrick and another nearby miner $618,000 for failing to report the release of toxic chemicals including cyanide, lead and mercury. But the main thing I was struck by as I observed each stage in this process was just how far we will go these days to secure a tiny shred of shiny metal.

> The scale, for one thing, was mind-boggling. As I looked down into the pit I could just about make out some trucks on the bottom, but only when they emerged at the top did I realise that they were bigger than three-storey buildings; the tyres alone were the size of a double-decker bus. How much earth do you have to remove to produce a gold bar? I asked my minders. They didn’t know, but they did know that in a single working day those trucks would shift rocks equivalent to the weight of the Empire State Building.

¹ Material World: A Substantial Story of Our Past and Future by Ed Conway

It seems totally beyond possible in scope and scale to validate something like this, even if you managed to get up close to one of these events it would still be too big and powerful to follow what is happening.