How we Bleed the Earth, our Guilt and Shame

A series of images portraying the impact of humankind's destructive industrial practices on the natural environment. The images portray the terrible beauty of mining’s toxic impact on the land, whilst serving as a reminder of man’s folly. Human impact on the environment or anthropogenic impact includes changes to biophysical environments and ecosystems, biodiversity, and natural resources. This affects global warming, environmental degradation such as ocean acidification, mass extinction and biodiversity loss, creating an ecological crisis, and ecological collapse. Modifying the environment to fit the needs of society is causing severe effects, which become worse as the problem of human overpopulation continues. Rio Tinto is a giant Australian mining conglomerate with revenues of over 45 billion USD, with operations worldwide. It is named after the river Rio Tinto after the purchase of a very large tract of land in the province of Huelva, Spain, from the Spanish government during the 19th century. The opencast mines of Rio Tinto have been excavated continuously since then, providing heavy metal ores such as iron, copper, silver and gold. Mountains, valleys and villages have disappeared from the hungry machinery devouring the land implacably, year after year. Giant scars on the landscape have been referred to as otherworldly with terrible hues of blue, green and red. The runoffs from these mines have created an eerie blood red flow in the river, hence the name Tinto. The river flows to the gulf of Cadiz carrying high acidity levels and heavy metals, in effect making this an environment disaster, a toxic reminder of human’s ability to irreversibly destroy the landscape in the name of corporate profits, a legacy of greed for future generations.