Gold the environmental choice? Surely not. Well as with many issues it depends on your frame of reference.

Firstly, before I receive thousands of angry emails I want to acknowledge the undeniable fact that gold mining is a dirty industry: it can displace communities, contaminates drinking water, hurt workers, and destroys pristine environments. Not exactly a great foundation for gold as an environmental champion I know, but hear me out.

 The frame of reference I use is economic development under FIAT paper money regime versus a gold standard. Whilst environmentally disasterous to extract from the ground, golds above ground role as a monetary standard would have prevented the reckless spending and consumption under a fiat regime since 1971. A FIAT montary system enables environmental destruction infinately more than would occur with gold. Credit growth, real estate speculation, over consumption, debt based development projects, simulus programs, leverage, fiscal deficits, erratic monetary policy, derivative based deveopment projects etc wold all be severely limited under a gold monetary standard. We would be forced to live within our means, a picutre so different to our hyper consumption and casino specualtion economy today. Less cars, less houses, less useless stuff means less demand for polluting factories, deforestation, scarce commodities and exploited cheap labour.

 If you believe that over consumption and over population are good for the planet, support FIAT money. If not, join the fight to move back to a gold standard.