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All the systems that give us both comfort and security … begin and end with the resources of mining and energy

The protest has the usual standard of intellectual vivacity we expect from these things. The signage was frequently inventive: “Health workers against corporate mining” caught my fancy. Presumably the health workers in question decline the use of scalpels, X-ray machines and MRIs, and instead of working in modern high-tech hospitals prefer seeing their patients outdoors in unheated tents. Where they stitch up wounds with twigs, and fall back on chanting for the more serious emergencies.

Nor will it be said their spokespeople lacked a sense of drama. Asked why she attended, one activist — a very Mandela in the making — offered that she was there “in solidarity with every community around the world that has faced down the barrel of a gun for daring to say no to a Canadian extractive project.”

The usual ironies marked the protest. IPhones were ubiquitous, and of course without a whole sackful of minerals, some common, some rare and mined only with the greatest difficulty, these the brand gadgets of our time would not exist. You could not text. You could not tweet. You would have to learn to spell again. Who could face such a world?

Photo by Jim Wells/Postmedia

However, if you protest against mining, out of a sense of moral consistency, you should throw away your iPhone. And how likely is that? The immortal refrain of Buddy Holly and the Crickets “that’ll be the day” supplies the answer.

The “demands” of the protesters, as they always are, were moderate. Shut down the mining industry neatly captures their reasonableness. Which happens to perfectly parallel their instructions to the energy industry, which they wish to see shut down as well. It’s a puzzle why such tranquil demands are not immediately heeded, and why the 25 thousands or so attendees, from 131 countries mind you, didn’t — upon hearing them — shut down the conference and head back at once to their own homelands. Preferably for the majority of them by raft or horseback.