It is almost impossible for mining to coexist with any other landuse. Therefore, conflict always arises when the landcover targeted by mining is also of interest and value to other groups within society. The conflicts that have arisen over sand mining or Aboriginal sacred sites are examples of this dispute.

Remember, the dispute is fundamentally about values: whether a mining operation is more important to society than Wilderness area, for example.

The only characteristic of mining landuse that is relevant to this argument is that mining will (most probably) permanently transform the landcover. All else is about the political realisation and accommodation of conflicting value sets within our society.

I believe that the most significant menace of mining in our collective environmental consciousness is that related to pollution. Pollution - misplaced waste - is the most powerful way mining operations can influence substantial areas of landcover, far more than the area of the actual mine. It is not hard to find examples of widespread pollution that have resulted from mining production, such as in Hobart and Queenstown in Tasmania, or, more commonly, from abandoned mines, such as Captains Flat in NSW. However, all of these and other disasters were created in the past, before the emergence and growth of the national environmental consciousness. I cannot see such mismanagement ever occurring again.

Still, there is some fire underneath a great deal of smoke. There are reasons why the landuse of mining is significant in the environmental well being of this nation even though the aggregate area of landcover it transforms is insignificantly small.