New technologies allowed us to mine deeper into the ground without fear of losing sight of whatever was ahead. New light bulbs made with copper wiring allowed us to see further into the mines we dug and built into which allowed for happier environments for us humans (Lecain, p. 29). Later on we would also develop helmets that would allow us to go into portions of mines that were filled with noxious air so that we could save the lives of our fellow humans, just like we did after the Speculator disaster. The consequences however, are also best highlighted in the Speculator disaster. Because we learned how to better circulate air in the mines, the fire was able to spread more quickly flaring higher on the oil we used to protect ourselves from shock. This happened because they wanted to bring more technology down into the mines to create sprinklers to suppress fires. Many people lost their lives because of this. In addition to that, people also used to greatly harm the earth in their mission to better things with technology. Despite how much they loved the earth and it’s aesthetics, people also used to think that destroying it was the only way to progress (Lecain, p. 55).
Just based on these two readings, I’m not sure mining can ever be a safe prospect for both humans and the planet. In the text by Keeling and Sandlos, they talk about how a mine did affect and is still affecting the earth and people today because of toxic groundwater within the mine itself. Should we continue mining the earth, and I’m sure we will, we need to take things like that into consideration and put preventative measures in place so we don’t have a repeat of that incident. In the article, they wrote about how they just closed off the mine and artificially replaced the permafrost above it in order to keep people safe, but even if they had wanted to go in and remove the problem they create a new problem: where do they put it? There’s no real technological fix for something like that today and the fixes we do have create more issues in the future.