[0:04] [delicate music]
[0:05] Gold.
[0:06] Born pure and immaculate in the heart of dying
stars, gold has captured the imagination of
[0:10] mankind since time immemorial.
[0:12] What enrapturing magic lies in that soft yellow
lustre?
[0:17] Why has gold enchanted so many for so long
with its soft, pillowy glow and warm, gentle,
[0:23] yet firm embrace?
[0:25] What mysteries lie in gold if we dare to follow
it down the forbidden path into the delicate
[0:30] folds of gold’s sweet
[0:32] Hey, is this getting weird for anyone else?
[0:37] [aggressive dubstep]
[0:44] Gold.
[0:47] I can’t be the only one who's getting spammed
with ads on the subject of gold, right?
[0:57] Whether it’s overpolished YouTube spots,
or TikTok finance guys pushing their trading
[1:02] courses a lot of people seem to want me, Dan
Olson specifically, to buy gold.
[1:08] Most ads for investments are fairly similar
and just kinda wash into the background radiation
[1:13] of daily life, but this one caught my attention.
[1:16] Idris Elba - “I’m going to tell you a
story far more incredible than I ever imagined.
[1:26] There’s nothing else like it.
[1:29] A miracle of nature.
[1:32] I’m talking about gold.”
[1:36] That is The Suicide Squad’s own Idris Elba
headlining a YouTube documentary on gold distributed
[1:42] by the “World Gold Council”... whoever
they are.
[1:45] I’m assuming they were the villains from
Captain Planet.
[1:48] ‘Gold: A Journey with Idris Elba’ promises
to take the viewer on an eye-pleasing, globe-spanning
[1:54] adventure peering into the fascinating and
complex relationship between humanity and
[1:59] element seventy nine, the ways gold intersects
history and technology, and the result is,
[2:05] well…
[2:06] I’m not going to bury the lede here, this
is corporate propaganda.
[2:10] It is not particularly good.
[2:13] But!
[2:15] Its existence is interesting.
[2:18] These kinds of celebrity-hosted corporate
spin pieces are a bit of a relic in this day
[2:23] and age, usually relegated to industry trade
shows or maybe looping on a screen in the
[2:28] back corner of some regional museum’s geology
exhibit.
[2:33] The Mineral Journey sponsored by the World
Gold Council.
[2:38] You know, that kind of thing.
[2:40] What’s unusual is how hard it’s being
pushed to a lay audience.
[2:45] If you even glanced at something finance related
lately, odds are you got pushed the trailer
[2:50] as an ad.
[2:51] “What is i about gold that’s got us so
hooked?
[2:54] There’s no sticking one in your pocket and
getting out of here is there?”
[3:04] Now, first of all, in the abstract a documentary
about gold is exactly the kind of thing that
[3:11] I’d watch.
[3:13] Gold is a genuinely compelling subject worthy
of exploration, especially by a documentary
[3:18] team with, like, a travel budget and at least
some access to the operations of a working
[3:24] mine.
[3:25] You could fill the running time of a documentary
just discussing the chemical properties of
[3:31] gold, its resistance to corrosion, its malleability,
and how those elemental traits, those quirks
[3:37] of physics and chemistry, inform its place
in culture.
[3:42] Gold is at once a practical and useful metal,
but also a social construct, an ideoform that
[3:48] connects its actual uses and various imposed
social meanings.
[3:52] Any comprehensive answer to the question “what
is gold?”
[3:57] unavoidably carries an emotional component,
and that is a complex thing to unwind.
[4:04] So here’s some fun facts about gold:
[4:08] Gold is incredibly resistant to corrosion.
[4:10] The main threats to things humans build and
use are oxygen, water, salt, and uv radiation,
[4:16] and gold is, for all intents and purposes,
immune to all of them.
[4:20] It neither rusts nor rots, and aside from
Instagram influencers nothing eats it.
[4:26] Gold is pretty rare.
[4:27] Of the 94 naturally occurring elements found
in Earth’s crust gold is ranked 75th, making
[4:32] up 4x10^-7 percent of the crust.
[4:36] Even though it is rare in terms of the total
mass of the earth, its global distribution
[4:40] is widespread, with significant deposits on
every continent.
[4:44] Also “relatively rare” in the context
of the mass of the earth still means warehouses
[4:49] full of the stuff in human terms.
[4:51] Despite this rarity gold has historically
been rather convenient, with nearly-pure gold
[4:56] nuggets being found in surface-level deposits,
rivers, and former rivers.
[5:00] Since it doesn’t corrode, gold exposed by
the elements stays shiny and easily identifiable.
[5:06] Gold is extremely malleable, to the point
it can be formed into threads a single-atom
[5:10] thick, and then those threads can be stretched
even further before breaking.
[5:14] It can be rolled into sheets so thin that
they become semi-translucent while still retaining
[5:19] structural integrity.
[5:20] It can be polished so smooth it is the material
of choice when a mirror requires maximum precision,
[5:27] such as those in space telescopes.
[5:29] Gold is hard enough to make useful household
objects out of, but soft enough to be worked
[5:33] with stone tools without smelting.
[5:35] Gold isn’t consumed by most of the things
humans use it for and can be readily recycled
[5:40] and repurposed simply by smelting it into
something new.
[5:43] St. Edward’s Crown could easily be reduced
back to a 2.23 kilo ingot of gold for a second
[5:49] time in history after English Parliament melted
the original mediaeval crown in 1649.
[5:55] We did it once before, Charles.
[5:56] We can do it again.
[5:58] As a result of all of these cosmic coincidences
humans have been using gold since prehistory
[6:03] and its basic industrialization has been invented
multiple times around the world.
[6:08] Putting all that another way, unlike basically
every other workable material at our disposal,
[6:14] a trinket made of gold can be sunk to the
bottom of the ocean for tens of thousands
[6:19] of years and be dug up functionally unchanged.
[6:23] The timeline of gold is the timeline of geology.
[6:27] This physical trait, this resilience, gives
it an allure of ‘everlasting value’.
[6:34] Even this little cheap little souvenir bottle
of gold wafers comes with a little card promising
[6:40] it is “a gift of remaining value.”
[6:43] There is a narrative around gold that starts
in its physical properties but balloons into
[6:49] its own collection of cultural signifiers,
its own mythology, and any thorough discussion
[6:54] about gold will inevitably intersect technology,
colonialism, war, and climate change.
[7:01] So when we talk of gold we’re really talking
about three distinct yet entwined things,
[7:06] all sharing a name: gold, the element, gold,
the narrative, and gold, the commodity, and
[7:13] it is this last one that is the subject of
our conversation today.
[7:17] Not everything is rosy for gold.
[7:19] Gold as a commodity faces a number of challenges
in 2023, some with roots going back decades
[7:24] and some more modern.
[7:26] Gold has, dare I say, a bit of an image problem.
[7:29] Gold, for a long list of reasons that are
not what this video is about, is a favourite
[7:34] of conspiracy theorists, preppers, and and
just, really, a whole host of weirdos.
[7:39] They hoard it, they accuse governments of
manipulating it, they promote it with an evangelical
[7:44] zeal.
[7:46] “Come in.
[7:50] How do you plan on supporting my granddaughter
young man?
[7:52] I’m only 17, sir.
[7:54] What can provide her with the brightest future?
[7:57] A home?
[7:58] Wrong!
[7:59] Gold!
[8:00] Gold?
[8:01] It’s never too early or late to secure your
future with gold!”
[8:05] For my younger viewers, this is real.
[8:07] This isn’t, this isn’t a Tim and Eric
sketch or a bit from The Daily Show, that’s
[8:11] the guy who did burglaries for Nixon sincerely
shilling gold.
[8:16] So safe to say nothing attracts a crank quite
like gold and that definitely impacts how
[8:21] the wider public thinks of gold as an investment.
[8:24] “Call Rosland Capital and tell them Gordon
Liddy sent you.”
[8:28] Alright, I want to take a second just to unwind
the facts of this.
[8:32] Despite the popularity of gold amongst people
who own doomsday bunkers, the rationale that
[8:37] they’re working from isn’t un-sound.
[8:40] If you were an investor back in the Netherlands
in 1635, which asset would deliver a better
[8:45] return over almost 400 years, tulips or gold?
[8:50] In the long run you can be pretty confident
that any gold you have will still be abstractly
[8:56] valuable in the indeterminate future.
[8:59] So on one hand gold as an abstract financial
instrument is unlikely to go anywhere, but
[9:05] on the other hand while gold is a safe bet
for your 400-year plan, it’s less of a sure
[9:11] thing in your 5-year portfolio.
[9:14] Gold doesn’t pay interest, so it didn’t
thrive in the low-inflation, low-interest
[9:18] climate of the bull run, but it’s also less
appealing in our current high-interest climate.
[9:23] And for the “sound money” gold-standard
Austrian Economics crowd, gold has seen heavy
[9:29] competition from cryptocurrency.
[9:31] The majority of the accessible gold has probably
already been mined, and after hundreds of
[9:36] years of panning and digging we’ve found
most of the easy stuff.
[9:40] New discoveries and new operations are becoming
increasingly expensive.
[9:45] As the documentary demonstrates with breathless
wonder, many modern mines, particularly the
[9:51] big, high-production mines, are thousands
of metres deep, and all mines involve displacing
[9:57] massive volumes of rock.
[9:59] “You feel stress?”
[10:01] “It’s that, it’s the idea that we're
going down into the, into the centre of the
[10:08] earth.”
[10:10] Mines are also under increasing scrutiny.
[10:13] The average consumer is more aware than ever
of the numerous impacts of gold mining.
[10:17] There’s both consciousness of the systemic
impacts, as well as greater access to information
[10:22] about working conditions.
[10:24] For instance, Less than two weeks before the
documentary was released, a gold mine in Zimbabwe
[10:29] collapsed, killing at least nine miners.
[10:31] So, we’re going to, for now, set aside the
question of if these mines should exist at
[10:37] all, whether or not the gold that they’re
digging up even needs to be dug up in the
[10:41] first place, and just for a moment put ourselves
in the mindset of a mine operator.
[10:47] We don’t need to empathise with them, but
we do need to understand their incentives.
[10:52] Mine operators don’t dig up and hoard gold
like they’re playing Minecraft, they dig
[10:57] it up and sell it.
[10:59] Making a profit from a gold mine requires
the company to thread a needle.
[11:04] Mining operations have enormous upfront costs,
and demand for gold is driven overwhelmingly
[11:09] by bearish sentiment elsewhere.
[11:13] Gold has its best days when the market is
crashing.
[11:16] This means that operating a gold mine can
be precarious, and the mine is extremely exposed
[11:24] to the price of gold.
[11:26] Even small increases in the value of gold
translates to massive profits for the mines.
[11:31] And in reverse, small decreases or lengthy
lulls, can be dire.
[11:37] Gold may be the safe pick in the long term,
but in the short term, investment in gold
[11:43] can lead to a lot of anxiety.
[11:45] Enter the World Gold Council.
[11:48] The WGC is one of the world’s leading authorities
on gold; and you’d hope so, given that the
[11:53] Council is comprised exclusively of major
gold mining companies.
[11:57] The organisation’s sole purpose is to push
demand for gold.
[12:01] That isn’t an accusation, it’s not even
a provocative statement.
[12:05] The World Gold Council is extremely up front
with its objective to promote the interests
[12:10] of its members, who are, again, big mining
companies.
[12:14] The organisation was founded in mid-1987 by
the most “forward-thinking mining companies”.
[12:20] And they were absolutely forward-thinking,
because before the end of the year gold’s
[12:25] value would begin a sustained decline that
would persist for the next 15 years.
[12:31] These sorts of lobby and marketing groups
are actually pretty common, promoting not
[12:35] just a specific company or brand but an entire
class of product, and they’re all technically
[12:41] non-profit organizations as a result.
[12:44] The World Gold Council exists in a weird spot
on the spectrum of propaganda.
[12:49] They lobby governments, they spin market trends,
and they greenwash mining activities, but
[12:54] their ultimate goal is to convince serious
investors to buy gold directly and to put
[12:59] their money into gold mines.
[13:02] Their clients sell literal gold, the WGC sells
the idea of gold.
[13:09] “You are precious, you are brilliance, you
are bold, you are gold”
[13:16] “Bro, I’ve been there, but gold saved
my portfolio”
[13:20] “A tip for you.
[13:23] Visit invest dot gold.”
[13:24] “Visit invest dot gold to see why gold is
everyone’s asset”
[13:28] “Stability security protection.
[13:31] You shouldn’t have to choose.
[13:35] Gold.
[13:36] Your strategic advantage.
[13:39] Visit goldhub dot com.”
[13:42] Like, this isn’t just online crank forum
stuff, these aren’t meme stocks, they don’t
[13:47] represent tiny “artisanal” mines that
consist of three dudes sharing the one jackhammer.
[13:52] Their main goal is convincing investors to
give millions of dollars to industrial operations
[13:58] that will move millions of tons of rock; they
can’t have a reputation for spreading disinformation.
[14:04] So while their job is propaganda, they are
considered a reputable source for research
[14:09] on gold.
[14:11] But that doesn’t stop the World Gold Council
from being implicated in countless conspiracy
[14:16] theories, typically painting it as a psy-op.
[14:19] “I long concluded that the World Gold Council
exists to make sure there never is a World
[14:24] Gold Council.”
[14:25] So you can try, but you’ll never escape
the cranks.
[14:29] “Well there’s some of us who have suspected
since GLD was put together that it is really
[14:37] a, it’s another mechanism in the tool of
the central bankers and their bullion banks
[14:43] to be able to use the public’s investment
gold to apply it to hot spots in the market
[14:50] to keep the price down, that it’s another
tool of gold price suppression.”
[14:55] So, “Gold: A Journey with Idris Elba”
is gold mining propaganda.
[15:00] Again, don’t take it from us, take it from
Joe Cavatoni, chief marketing strategist for
[15:05] the World Gold Council.
[15:06] “The documentary was commissioned, simply
put, to support our ambition as an organisation
[15:12] to help the world really understand the value
of gold, and really the experience of its
[15:17] transformative power, you know.”
[15:18] We’re going to come back to this interview
a few times.
[15:21] It’s… very interesting, but, yeah, then
he just lists some mining industry talking
[15:27] points.
[15:28] “Yeah I think there’s a couple of key
messages that are in the film.
[15:31] I’m just gonna highlight a few.
[15:33] The first is that, for every one job that
a gold mine produces six indirect jobs, or
[15:38] jobs around the community of that gold mine
get created.
[15:41] A lot of people don’t realise that.”
[15:43] It is as subtle as, a gold-plated toilet
[15:47] The documentary itself has a bit more of a
deft hand when it comes to smuggling the agenda
[15:51] in with the info but, not that deft a hand.
[15:56] “These things, even though they mean a lot
to the artist, but they actually carry the
[16:00] weight of the money that they”
[16:02] “100%”
[16:03] “Like you know it’s not like it’s ever
gonna depreciate.”
[16:05] “100%.
[16:06] It’s the same thing.
[16:08] Buying gold, they’re investments.”
[16:09] That isn’t subtext, that’s just text.
[16:11] The documentary allegedly features Idris Elba
supposedly going on a globe-trotting adventure
[16:16] to shed light on humanity’s ancient relationship
to gold.
[16:19] In actuality, it’s a virtual-tour of gold
mines that all belong to members of the World
[16:24] Gold Council, and each segment exists to either
counter a popular criticism of the gold mining
[16:29] industry, or pitch the mine as an investment
opportunity.
[16:33] Elba visits mines in Canada and South Africa,
meets the gold-bedecked Ashanti King, Otumfour
[16:38] Osei Tutu II in Ghana, gets a tour of a Bank
of England gold vault, hangs out with famous
[16:44] hip-hop jeweller Abs the Jeweller, and narrates
segments on mine clean up, gold jewellery
[16:48] in India, the California gold rush, and a
straight up marketing pitch for gold prospecting
[16:54] in Peru.
[16:55] Like, just to be clear - every mine credited
in the documentary belongs to a WGC member
[17:01] corporation.
[17:02] And they play us all the hits.
[17:04] Gold mines foster local economies, they build
infrastructure, mining companies totally clean
[17:08] up after themselves, they’re even on the
front lines of battling malaria.
[17:12] Though…
[17:13] On that note… even the doc doesn’t bother
to pretend that battling malaria is an altruistic
[17:19] endeavour.
[17:20] It’s because they lose more to sick days
than the cost of R&D on new pesticides.
[17:25] “Out of the work force of eight thousand
employees, every month you had about six thousand
[17:31] eight hundred of these employees and their
dependants report into the mine hospital for
[17:35] malaria.
[17:36] So the mine decided to establish a malaria
control program.”
[17:41] It’s hard to overlook the fact that the
documentary’s global scope has less to do
[17:45] with the grandness of the subject matter,
and more a matter of cherry-picking.
[17:50] The documentary is unique partly because it
would be utterly banal in a different context.
[17:56] The film is composed of a series of four to
six minute sequences that, again, would normally
[18:01] be looping in the corner of a museum installation.
[18:04] The fact that something so insubstantial is
being pushed so hard is kinda fascinating
[18:10] in itself.
[18:11] They had Idris-Elba money, and chose to spend
it on this.
[18:15] “Wow, look at how hot that is.”
[18:18] On that note, a common discussion point about
the doc has been Idris Elba’s performance.
[18:22] It’s very strange.
[18:24] There are times when Idris is energised.
[18:26] “So today is the very special Ashanti Akwasidae
Festival.
[18:31] I’ve been honoured to be asked to be part
of the procession, and it is an honour.”
[18:37] There are times when he’s clearly working
hard to sell this thing.
[18:41] “into the… centre of the Earth.”]
[18:43] “I tell you what, it’s so exciting.
[18:44] This is so exciting.
[18:45] It’s the first time I’ve ever seen gold
being poured.”
[18:50] And in the sound booth, Idris has a very stilted
energy.
[18:54] It could be a deliberate choice, but it feels
kind he’s cold reading the script off a
[18:58] teleprompting that is slightly too far away.
[19:01] “But for me, and I’m pretty sure I’m
not alone here, the best thing about gold
[19:05] is being able to wear it.”
[19:08] For comparison, here is Elba’s performance
in a different doc.
[19:12] “To understand how club culture has become
so engrained in our modern lives, we need
[19:17] to go back to a scene that started on New
York’s underground.
[19:20] It was the 70s, and the city was suffering.”
[19:22] Idris has close ties to Ghana and has spent
several years working to develop a film studio
[19:27] in the region.
[19:29] During his trip where he met the Ashanti King,
he also met the President of Ghana to discuss
[19:33] policy - and was planning to bring an upcoming
film of his to the region.
[19:38] "...we could case study my film as a proof
of concept…"
[19:43] To what extent this influenced his decision
to do the project, we can only speculate.
[19:48] But it’s plainly obvious that Idris really
turns up in Ghana, and less so in Quebec.
[19:53] “Wow.
[19:54] Look at how hot that is.”
[19:56] What we’re left with is a very standard
piece of corporate communication with a celebrity
[20:00] voice actor and overly dramatic framing.
[20:04] For the most part, the documentary is just
boring.
[20:07] The doc makes boring decisions for self-interested
reasons.
[20:11] By way of example, India has the second highest
demand for gold after China.
[20:16] The two combine to make up half the world’s
demand for gold.
[20:20] This makes the World Gold Council very invested
in the Indian gold market.
[20:25] So we get a short sequence in India that alludes
to the cultural significance of gold in India.
[20:31] This is a big and genuinely interesting subject,
but as will be a common theme, the doc doesn’t
[20:36] have time to do ‘interesting’.
[20:39] The nuanced significance of gold in Hindu
and Ashanti cultures are flanderised into
[20:44] this very odd and uniform notion of “respect”.
[20:47] Here’s Joe specifically responding to a
question about the importance of treating
[20:51] gold with “spiritual respect”... whatever
that means.
[20:56] “We come on your program regularly, we talk
about gold demand trends, we talk about the
[21:00] significance of India as a market.
[21:04] Play close attention where Idris sees a young
couple getting married.
[21:09] They talk in great detail about how its significant
beyond the dowry, the wealth creation, or
[21:13] the passing on of that dowry, it's more about
how it fits into the society…”
[21:23] Okay, so, this doesn’t actually happen.
[21:24] For one; Idris isn’t there, he doesn’t
see anything, but besides that the documentary
[21:29] only focuses on the bride’s gold jewellery.
[21:32] The dowry isn’t acknowledged at all, likely
because it’s a complicated, thorny, topic
[21:37] to throw at a western audience.
[21:40] But this is the essence of the documentary
on the whole: by volume, it is mostly tacky
[21:45] but inoffensive corporate spin on a shallow
engagement with the subject matter.
[21:50] But there are, of course, issues that are
too big even for propaganda to just omit.
[21:55] The subjects of colonialism and environment
being the two major ones.
[22:00] The doc has a sequence in Johannesburg where
the subjects of race and working conditions
[22:05] are quarantined.
[22:07] The film cedes some ground on this, acknowledging
that historically gold mining maybe… briefly…
[22:16] intersected with racism.
[22:17] Elba interviews Frans Baleni, who worked in
apartheid-era gold mines and was a leader
[22:22] of a key miner’s strike.
[22:24] During that interview, the two don’t pull
any punches.
[22:27] They are carrying no water for the mines.
[22:29] “we were not really looked after.
[22:31] We were almost like slaves, because what they
needed is your labour, nothing else.”
[22:38] However, this film was commissioned by mining
companies.
[22:41] So…
[22:42] “There’s no hiding from the fact
[22:45] No hiding, yeah
[22:46] “that gold mining played a major part”
[22:49] Uh huh
[22:50] “in shaping South African society during
the apartheid years.”
[22:53] Yeah?!
[22:54] “But with gold”
[22:56] [Airhorn noises]
[22:58] The doc then very awkwardly frames gold as
a liberating force for black miners.
[23:03] “But with gold comes power, and those gold
miners, they knew that.”
[23:09] Because you see… gold, by being so useful,
gave the miners a bargaining chip.
[23:15] By withholding their labour, and denying the
country access to the gold… really, the
[23:19] black community was empowered.
[23:21] It’s a subtle reframing of a labour strike
not as the withholding of labour, but as the
[23:28] withholding of product.
[23:30] An inert mineral is stealing the valour of
labour unions.
[23:35] It’s very weird.
[23:36] We’re then abruptly moved to South Deep,
an active mine in the region that is making
[23:40] use of remote vehicles operated from the surface.
[23:43] This is an interesting novelty, and genuinely
represents an improvement in working conditions
[23:48] for at least some stuff, but it doesn’t
really seem to follow the heavy discussion
[23:53] of Apartheid.
[23:54] But as they talk about mechanization, they
talk about how it has done at least something
[23:58] for gender equality amongst the workers, and
then this segment’s purpose comes into focus.
[24:05] “There are ladies who are miners, crew leaders,
and then production supervisors”
[24:10] Its purpose in the Text is to absolve the
industry.
[24:13] By saying ‘here is what happened then, and
here is what is happening now’, the text
[24:18] argues that mining companies have fixed the
problem.
[24:22] “Chu chu chu”
[24:23] That’s already wild on its face, but even
within the doc it’s absurd.
[24:28] One is a serious, politically charged conversation
dealing with the subject of race and systemic
[24:34] exploitation; the other is about the quirks
of driving a $5 million RC truck for a day
[24:40] job.
[24:41] The argument does not land at all, but the
documentary just moves on with an entirely
[24:45] undeserved confidence that it has tackled
the subject of race in the global mining sector.
[24:51] Then there’s the subject of the environment.
[24:54] Obviously there is no nuanced discussion of
the environmental impacts of mining where
[24:58] the companies come out of it looking good.
[25:01] So the mandate is simple: say as little as
possible to omit issues, while playing up
[25:07] successes.
[25:08] So, that explains why the New Zealand segment
is the way it is.
[25:11] But it just sucks.
[25:12] It sucks so bad.
[25:14] The topic is specifically on the closure and
restoration of sites; mining companies ‘tidying
[25:19] up’ after themselves.
[25:21] The segment focuses on the reclamation of
Reefton Mine, located on the south island
[25:25] of New Zealand.
[25:26] The entire sequence is four minutes long,
of which there’s maybe 90 seconds of footage
[25:31] of the mine.
[25:32] We see that the main pit has been filled with
water, and we’re shown the process used
[25:36] to plant seeds from a helicopter.
[25:38] We’re then treated to a CG render of what
the site is expected to look like at some
[25:43] unstated point in the future.
[25:45] We close on some B-roll of wildlife, and we’re
done with New Zealand.
[25:49] Here is the totality of material on the pit.
[25:53] “When the mine closed in 2016, their first
task was to fill the main pit, to turn it
[26:00] into a lake.
[26:02] It’s nice, but it still looks like a mine
to me”
[26:10] If I held stock in Oceana Gold I would be
furious.
[26:14] Anyone with any general knowledge of mining
is going to come away from this doc certain
[26:18] that this is a pit lake - the same toxic,
corrosive hellholes that you find in a Tom
[26:23] Scott video.
[26:24] “It is a mile wide and so deep you could
fit the new One World Trade Center standing
[26:29] upright in it.
[26:31] Or at least you could if the pit wasn’t
halfway filled with toxic, dilute acid.”
[26:35] “It looks inviting, but you wouldn’t want
to swim in there.
[26:39] That is dark, lonely water.
[26:41] It looks toxically blue, and it is.
[26:43] It’s alkaline, it’s got a pH above 11,
it would be like swimming in dilute bleach.”
[26:46] “Tell you what that water’s nice and blue
to me.”
[26:50] But the Reefton pit is not like those pit
lakes, and this site is notable for precisely
[26:56] that reason - that’s why we’re here.
[26:59] Okay, just to back up for a sec.
[27:02] We all know about abandoned mines.
[27:03] A company would work a mine until either the
mine or the company went bust, and then they
[27:08] would just walk away.
[27:10] In the case of open-cut mines like Reefton,
the pits often fill with rainwater over time
[27:15] to create artificial bodies of water.
[27:17] Pit lakes, or quarry lakes, are exceptionally
dangerous places for a whole host of reasons
[27:23] that we’ll just put up on screen here for
a moment.
[27:25] The majority of fatalities at abandoned mines
are attributed to drowning in pit lakes.
[27:31] You may also be familiar with famous sites
like the Berkeley Pit in Butte, Montanna.
[27:35] Berkeley’s pit lake is so contaminated by
copper that for about a decade copper was
[27:41] “mined” directly from the lake water.
[27:43] This makes the water toxic, and if the pit
lake fills beyond a certain point, the forbidden
[27:48] gatorade will spill into the general water
supply, which is considered generally undesirable.
[27:54] In response the US Environmental Protection
Agency has mandated that the lake must never
[27:59] reach that critical level, so the water must
be actively pumped out in perpetuity, but
[28:05] even with that over the years they’ve had
to just keep making the thing bigger because
[28:11] it’s really hard to keep water from getting
into an existing lake.
[28:17] The Berkeley Pit is a particularly high profile
example, but there are thousands of pit lakes
[28:22] out there, each with their own risk factors.
[28:25] Believe it or not Tom Scott hasn’t even
visited half of them!
[28:29] This is not a minor problem, this is one of
the fundamental byproducts of the process:
[28:35] the thing you are doing at an elemental level
is digging a huge hole.
[28:41] Until very recently it was considered progressive
to enforce what is called a ‘lock and leave’
[28:48] policy.
[28:49] Mining companies can leave behind a pit that
will fill with toxic water, but they at least
[28:53] need to put up a fence.
[28:55] Needless to say this doesn’t do much to
mitigate the harm of these pits.
[29:00] Once a pit lake is established, it’s incredibly
difficult to unwind, because now you’re
[29:04] dealing with massive volumes of water, which
is both very heavy in its own right and does
[29:09] not much care for where you do and do not
want it to go.
[29:14] So the solution is simple, don’t let mining
companies leave sites in a state that will
[29:19] produce a toxic pit.
[29:21] That is a complex, multi-disciplinary process.
[29:24] So, that brings us back to Reefton.
[29:27] In 2004, OceanaGold received approval to operate
the Reefton Mine.
[29:32] As part of this, they were subject to heavy
obligations to restore the site upon closure
[29:36] of the mine- which included the posting of
a performance bond that, like a rental bond,
[29:42] was money set aside to cover the restoration
of the land in the event Oceana went bust.
[29:47] An operations director for the Department
of Conservation praised the company’s work,
[29:51] describing it as “world class”.
[29:54] Unlike mining operators in the past, OceanaGold
prepared for the closing of the mine years
[29:59] ahead of time.
[30:00] They’re one of the first to make use of
a new water treatment system conceptualised
[30:04] at Cardiff University.
[30:05] “By oxygenating the water before it enters
the Vertical Flow Reactor the iron within
[30:11] the water comes out of solution, turning it
a reddish-brown colour.
[30:15] The iron particulate then gently settles on
a gravel bed at the bottom of the ponds.
[30:20] Iron naturally attracts other metals, and
so is able to capture free-floating arsenic
[30:25] from the water.
[30:26] The water continues its gravity fed course
through the gravel bed and exits the system
[30:31] into Devils Creek.
[30:33] Extensive testing has proven that the Vertical
Flow Reactor reliably removes excess arsenic
[30:38] and iron from the water.
[30:40] Over time, the metals will be exhausted from
the leachable area of the surrounding rock
[30:45] and the pods will continue to naturally spill
into Devils Creek”
[30:48] I’m sorry, why wasn’t any of this in the
documentary?
[30:53] The helicopter is not what makes Reefton interesting.
[30:56] It’s the ecological restoration that, literally,
gets into the weeds.
[31:02] “The wooding material that we’ve placed
around the restoration sites also provide
[31:06] little micro-climates for other species that
we wouldn’t have planted ourselves, such
[31:10] as these ferns.”
[31:12] Reefton may be the best example of reclamation
on the planet.
[31:15] The World Gold Council must think so, otherwise
we wouldn’t be here.
[31:19] But the doc doesn’t want to dig into the
subject of restoration in any detail because
[31:24] to celebrate what makes Reefton noteworthy
would require admitting that it is exceptional.
[31:31] ‘Hey, these guys have almost cracked the
toxic pit problem.’
[31:35] ‘Wait, what toxic pit problem?’
[31:37] It’s also hard to overlook the fact that
vertical flow reactors are being implemented
[31:42] in New Zealand, South Korea, and the USA.
[31:45] You know, wealthy nations.
[31:47] It’s one thing for New Zealand to strong-arm
OceanaGold into restoring a site adjacent
[31:52] to a national park, but what about countries
in the global south?
[31:56] Human rights organizations have repeatedly
found OceanaGold in violation of indigenous
[32:00] rights around their Didipio mine dating back
to 2007, accusations including illegal evictions
[32:07] and arson, and have repeatedly recommended
that their licence to mine be revoked.
[32:12] It was not.
[32:13] And the UN has denounced the “unnecessary
and disproportionate” use of force against
[32:18] local residents as recently as 2020.
[32:22] Can Filipino residents expect OceanaGold to
implement world class restoration techniques
[32:27] to restore their land?
[32:29] Odds aren’t great!
[32:31] The work being done at Reefton is interesting
and important - it is exceptional in every
[32:36] sense of the word.
[32:37] The documentary went to New Zealand to cherry
pick the most radical project it could find,
[32:42] but still managed to stuff it up.
[32:44] The documentary is only willing to engage
with the superficial elements of ecological
[32:49] restoration - specifically the tree planting.
[32:52] “It’s really just gardening.
[32:55] But supersized.”
[32:57] In its brief runtime, the documentary focuses
exclusively on aesthetics, which is explicitly
[33:03] not what the restoration project is about.
[33:06] “So we’re not trying to hide the fact
that we mined here, but we’re just trying
[33:10] our best to put it back.”
[33:12] The community doesn’t need the mine’s
existence obscured - they need the company
[33:17] to clean up their crap and avoid poisoning
the groundwater; which is what they’re doing.
[33:23] But the documentary would leave viewers believing
that the project is greenwashing - simply
[33:28] planting trees around an inevitable hazard.
[33:31] The documentary manages to misrepresent both
angles of the subject.
[33:35] It omits the actual reason why closed mines
are so dangerous, and the meaningful ecological
[33:41] restoration being carried out at the site.
[33:44] The result is that the environmental activists
are pissed off, the company’s shareholders
[33:48] are pissed off, and you, the viewer, are bored.
[33:51] This sucks.
[33:53] Once the doc is satisfied that it has addressed
all your concerns, and made its case for gold
[33:57] as a thing, it’s happy to drop the pretense
and fixate on the financials for the last
[34:01] 15 minutes.
[34:02] Idris is given a tour of the Bank of England.
[34:05] “I’ve got an appointment with the bank’s
chief cashier.
[34:10] One of the very few people with access to
its vaults.
[34:14] Sarah John.”
[34:16] Anyway, Idris gawks at gold bullion for a
bit, before taking a very brief aside to tastelessly
[34:23] discuss the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami.
[34:25] “On the 26th of December, 2004, there was
a massive tsunami in the Indian Ocean.”
[34:31] The Boxing Day tsunami is the deadliest natural
disaster of the 21st century, with over 130,000
[34:37] confirmed deaths in Indonesia alone, mostly
concentrated in the province of Aceh.
[34:42] “But in Aceh, there was something unusual
about the community that helped it recover.
[34:48] You see, most people didn’t have saving
accounts.
[34:53] Instead, they had gold ingots and jewellery,
which meant they could quickly use it as collateral
[35:02] and start putting their lives back together.”
[35:07] So we get that little gold nugget, before
immediately moving on to hang out with a celebrity
[35:12] jeweller.
[35:13] “Abtin Abbasi, or Abs for short, is part
of a new wave in jewelry that began with Hip
[35:19] Hop.
[35:20] “Like you know it’s not like it’s ever
gonna depreciate.” “100%.
[35:22] It’s the same thing.
[35:24] Buying gold, they’re investments.”
[35:25] The final segment is functionally an ad for
Newmont’s operations in Peru, which are
[35:29] still in their speculative stages before the
doc wraps up.
[35:33] “So, the story of gold.
[35:35] To me, it’s really a love story.
[35:38] Like all romances, it’s had its up and downs.”
[35:42] What downs Idris?
[35:44] What downs?
[35:45] What do you think the downs might be?
[35:47] Here, here, I’ve got my notes ready to go,
I can help make a list, what are the downs?
[35:52] “They’re all part of our relationship
with this beautiful seductive metal”
[35:59] Hey, is this getting weird for anyone else?
[36:03] The core audience for the documentary has
received it one of two ways.
[36:07] Your standard Goldbugs have lovebombed the
doc.
[36:10] Like crypto bros and Apes, there is a vested
interest in the documentary’s success as
[36:14] a tool of propaganda, leading to the same
types of astroturf techniques.
[36:19] On the complete other end of the spectrum,
the crackpot breed of goldbug has responded
[36:23] to the film with outright hostility.
[36:25] Framing it as a deliberate misinformation
to distract from the truth about gold… whatever
[36:31] that may be.
[36:32] “I’m willing to bet your coming WGC gold
documentary will be more like a childlike
[36:37] cartoon.
[36:38] You won’t dare to try to choke down some
of these ongoing spicy facts regarding the
[36:41] current day canard of modern day gold price
discovery”
[36:45] But for us, the documentary’s cardinal sin
is that it’s boring.
[36:49] A documentary on gold could be interesting,
should be interesting.
[36:53] But this is what you get when filmmakers try
to tell a human story through the filter of
[36:59] industry.
[37:00] The potential is there, but the documentary
is tethered to corporate interests from which
[37:04] it cannot stray.
[37:06] Gold is so culturally significant in India
that it’s a pillar of the global gold industry.
[37:11] That’s fascinating, but if you really dug
into it you’d need to talk about the whole
[37:15] dowry thing, and your American investors might
find that a bit uncomfortable - best just
[37:21] not say anything, just talk about how pretty
it is.
[37:25] If we praise Reefton’s water quality, then
potential investors might learn about the
[37:29] toxic pit lakes that we normally leave behind
[37:32] “Wait, what toxic pit problem?”
[37:34] So better to just focus on the trees.
[37:37] Corporate interests smother the compelling
material, grinding it down to its shallowest
[37:42] form.
[37:43] Essential material is absent, and what material
is there is inexplicably boring.
[37:48] Funny thing is that this isn’t even the
WGC’s first crack at this particular concept.
[37:53] In 2021 they released a miniseries called
The Golden Thread.
[37:57] Wait, sorry, not a miniseries, a “landmark
immersive documentary series showcasing gold’s
[38:03] impact on humanity’s past, present and future.”
[38:07] The hook for this one was that they found
experts in fields that use gold in some form
[38:11] or another, aerospace and the like, and then
have them talk about their projects.
[38:16] “Gold is critically important to make MOXY
work for a number of reasons”
[38:23] But it’s all the same problem, there are
specific interests being served, you can’t
[38:28] just tell a story where gold is a thematic
connector between all these other interesting
[38:33] subjects, you need gold to be the main character.
[38:37] So the whole thing turns into a parade of
scientists and engineers talking about their
[38:42] projects as though the most important thing
about it is that gold is involved.
[38:48] Like, sure, we detected gravitational waves,
that’s cool and all, but let’s talk about
[38:54] how colliding neutron stars generate a lot
of value.
[38:58] “What scientists saw that day was gold being
created in space!
[39:02] The gold created in this collision will cycle
through the cosmos and perhaps one day will
[39:08] form part of another planet”
[39:10] The impression isn’t that gold is a kinda
unique material with useful and interesting
[39:15] physical properties, but literally magic.
[39:17] And when I say “there are interests being
served” and all that, I’m not extrapolating,
[39:23] these people are very explicit.
[39:25] It’s in the press release!
[39:26] “The purpose of the documentary is to increase
the relevance and consideration of gold in
[39:31] the minds of investors and consumers alike.”
[39:34] It’s kinda maddening, I get so used to dealing
with covert propagandists who are trying to
[39:39] smuggle in some ulterior agenda and the World
Gold Council just does my job for me.
[39:44] “Guard it with gold.
[39:47] So when the unexpected happens and the world
is in turmoil, you’re protected.”
[39:53] So, the thing that I find compelling here
is the existence of these corporate propaganda
[39:58] pieces, because the fact that someone decided
this was a good project to make, that this
[40:02] was worth the hundreds of thousands of dollars
that it would have cost even outside of whatever
[40:07] Idris Elba was paid, that in and of itself
is an indicator.
[40:12] The World Gold Council doesn’t just decide
to hire a celebrity spokesperson and plaster
[40:17] his face across the internet because they’re
bored.
[40:19] They don’t make a documentary about how
cool gold is because they’re just, like,
[40:24] they think it’s neat.
[40:26] They do it because there’s something that
they think they need to convince us of.
[40:30] It ends up so weird and stilted because they’re
trying to talk about narrative and meaning
[40:35] but those ideas are completely foreign to
the people who produced this.
[40:39] I want to go back to that interview with Joe
Cavatoni because it really helps illustrate
[40:43] that these guys are just living in an alternate
universe.
[40:47] So, there’s this phrase we’re all familiar
with at this point: selling shovels during
[40:51] a gold rush, the best way to get rich in a
gold rush isn’t to dig for gold, it’s
[40:56] to sell shovels.
[40:57] It’s kinda a dark phrase, isn’t it?
[41:00] Like, at a basic level it speaks to some grimmer
human instincts: opportunism, exploitation,
[41:04] delusion.
[41:05] It’s a phrase about crass pragmatism in
the face of irrationality.
[41:12] You would think that a guy who represents
the interests of the guys buying shovels would
[41:17] maybe find the phrase a bit distasteful, but
these are capitalists, in the purest sense
[41:22] of the word.
[41:23] “You know a lot of people fail to remember
that the California gold rush produced a very
[41:27] successful and very wealthy man, and that
was Levi Strauss.
[41:30] There’s a bit in the story about it”
[41:31] “No, that was a great part of this movie.”
[41:33] “Yeah it’s a fun story to understand and
you see how it’s not just about gold and
[41:39] mining, but it’s about everything in the
ecosystem around it that brings it to life.”
[41:42] “Yeah, it’s not just about selling shovels,
it’s about selling jeans, for example, to
[41:46] those that are using the picks and the axes”
[41:49] There’s no sentimentality here.
[41:52] There’s money to be made.
[41:54] And the thing is that Joe is ultimately a
kind of shovel salesman himself.
[41:57] Like, okay, on one hand Joe represents companies
who dig up gold, companies who literally buy
[42:03] shovels.
[42:04] But the people digging up literal gold aren’t
the metaphorical gold rush here, mines aren’t
[42:10] panic-buying machine parts.
[42:12] The entire thesis of the World Gold Council
is that gold, the asset, is a safe harbour
[42:17] in a turbulent market.
[42:19] It’s not just a thing for cranks and weirdos
with five years of canned beans in their booby
[42:23] trapped shed, gold is for slick, elegant,
savvy people.
[42:27] Ordinary, yet classy.
[42:29] The WGC wants you to know that this could
be you.
[42:34] “Gold is everyone’s asset.”
[42:36] We live in turbulent times, and the market
has been socially elevated as the one real
[42:40] path for building wealth.
[42:42] That’s the gold rush, and Joe, with his
slick looking celebrity documentary and calming
[42:48] social media ads is trying to sell you a shovel.
[42:58] [Dubstep]
[43:01] [Idris Elba auto-tuned repeating “Gold”
over and over and over]