By ELLEN T. TORDESILLAS
A video of the exchange between Gina Lopez, incoming President Rodrigo Duterte’s choice as secretary of Environment and Natural Resources, and a pro-mining advocate is going the rounds of social media.
Lopez was asking the man to choose between food and minerals because she argued that mining that extracts minerals from underneath the ground destroys the land where man produce food. Apparently Lopez has not heard of responsible mining.
Apparently also, the pro-mining man mentioned the things that we use in our daily lives that came from mining such as toothpaste.
Here’s the exchange that followed:
Lopez: Kumakain ka ba? Ano ang mas importante, toothpaste o pagkain ? …Ano ang pipiliin mo, mineral o pagkain?
Pro-mining person: Both.
Lopez: Ay hindi pwede.
Pro-mining person: Sa pagkain, may kaldero ka o wala?
Lopez: Wala.
Pro-mining person: Wala kang kaldero?
Very revealing exchange. The pro-mining guy probably brought up caldero because you need that to cook food. A caldero or any cooking utensil including rice cooker contains metals that were mined from underground.
But then Lopez was probably telling the truth when she said she has no caldero because maybe she does not cook. For all we know she doesn’t know what a caldero is. She probably eats out or she orders and food is delivered to her. She has the means to do that.
She should be told that the food that was delivered to her was cooked in a caldero. When she eats, she uses plate, fork and spoon. She drinks her water from a glass. Those things contain minerals that came from mining.
Strange because in an article she wrote in Rogue Magazine she revealed that when she was in Africa during her Ashram days, she cooked.
When Lopez was arguing with the guy, she was holding a microphone to deliver her message. That microphone contains metals from mining.
In that forum, Lopez was wearing a red dress. We imagine she was wearing shoes. Those were produced by machines that contained metals mined from the earth. If mining is totally banned, there would be no sewing machines, no needles and pins to make clothes and shoes. Gina would have to wear leaves just like Adam and Eve.
Did Lopez walk from her house to the venue of the forum? If she took a car, she was being untrue to her anti-mining advocacy because a car contains metals produced by mining. There would be no vehicles without mining. There would be no airplanes, no trains, without mining.
The forum was held in an air-conditioned room. An aircon unit contains metals from beneath the ground that can only be obtained by mining. We imagine that the rooms in Lopez’s house are air-conditioned. Her house, we imagine, is sturdy because it is made of concrete and steel. She is able to sleep well and not exposed to the sun and the rain because materials from mining sheltered her from the elements.
Does she have a cellphone? She should throw that away because that contains many things from underground obtained through mining. Same with computers.
Lopez’s family is in communications, a business that is dependent on equipment and tools made of materials from mining. To use and enjoy the fruits of mining and denounce mining at the same time is the height of hypocrisy.
