The world’s attention is now on the Amazon, the “lungs of the planet,” with wildfires ripping through the forest. The fires are now spurring groups and governments all over the world to call for a boycott on beef, believing that the culprits for the fires are cattle ranchers who want more land. However, cattle ranching is not the only factor in the destruction of the Amazon forest. It’s also the gold mining industry, Buzzfeed details:
A map compiled by environmental group Amazon Geo-Referenced Socio-Environmental Information Network shows 2,312 illegal mining sites in 245 areas across six countries, which the group called an “epidemic.”
Fueling that demand is not just the world’s appetite for gold bars and jewelry — the largest categories for which gold is used — but also high tech. Tiny electrical currents are constantly running through your iPhone, Alexa speaker, and laptop — and carrying those currents is gold, a fantastic conductor of electricity that’s also resistant to corrosion. While there isn’t much gold inside a single device — an iPhone 6, for example, contains 0.014 grams, or around 50 cents’ worth — in the aggregate, the amount is staggering. According to market researcher Gartner, over 1.5 billion smartphones were sold last year, with 1.3 billion of them being Android devices. It was followed by 215 million iOS devices.
So the tech industry, which consumes nearly 335 tons of gold yearly, will only need more and more of the metal. “There’s a gold rush in the Amazon right now that’s just like the gold rush that happened in California in the 1850s,” said Silman.
image credit: Afp | AFP | Getty Images via Buzzfeed