June 2003 AGGMAN Geology

Beliefs and Values: A Product of Our Times

A society’s values and actions are based on what
is deemed important at a particular stage in history.

A few nights ago I was in my workshop when the motor on my lathe started to sputter. A couple of sparks, a whiff of ozone, and the motor died. Fortunately, I had a spare motor waiting to be used. Both the dead motor and the spare were 25-year-old items that I had extracted from clothes dryers discovered in impromptu trash heaps when I doing fieldwork during the late 1970s. While I was trying to figure out the wiring arrangement for my “new” motor, I started thinking about those trash heaps, and the way people looked at the environment back in “the good ole days.”
As a kid, during the 1950s and 1960s, my dad and I would take our household trash to the town dump. And believe me, it was a dump, not a sanitary landfill. One of my Saturday chores was to burn the paper in a wire basket in the back yard. We cooked potatoes covered with mud in the piles of leaves we burned in the street. We killed insects with a hand-pumped atomizer that delivered a spray containing DDT. We killed weeds with nasty herbicides.
Today, these activities are considered “bad.” But this is what nearly everybody did in my hometown, and many other towns, during the 1950s and 1960s. And worse. People dumped trash (including clothes dryers) alongside the road. Agricultural practices included the heavy application of persistent pesticides and herbicides. Industrial practices sometimes resulted in the release of toxic substances, and industrial wastes sometimes were carelessly buried. In some places, timber harvesting and mineral resource extraction were conducted with little or no regard for environmental consequences. We were a product of our times.
The point is that most of our activities in the past were not done out of malice or lack of caring. My dad always cared for the environment, and taught me to do likewise. We recycled cans, bottles, and newspapers before recycling was cool. Our activities, and those of society in general, were based on the beliefs and values of the time. But those beliefs and values changed as society became more aware of its impact on the environment. And as beliefs and values changed, protection of the environment took on a new importance. By the early 1970s, my hometown had a genuine landfill.
During the 1970s, cities and suburbs were growing by leaps and bounds, and construction of the Interstate Highway System was in full swing. The demand for aggregate grew accordingly. This increased demand, combined with the need to locate operations near the market areas, created a situation where people had many more opportunities to come in contact with aggregate operations. This contact sometimes resulted in conflict, and conflicts also changed people’s beliefs and values.
By the early 1990s, applications for aggregate operations became rallying points for citizen action. According to Anthony Bauer, a former professor at Michigan State University, citizens tended to judge the aggregate industry based on past egregious actions or poor standards practiced by a few members of the industry, rather than the more enlightened practices being employed by the majority of the industry at the time. The public’s beliefs, as outdated as they were, created a situation where reason and compromise suffered in the local zoning process. As far as the mining industry was concerned, citizen participation had changed from participatory government to absolute opposition groups.
Basically, peoples’ beliefs and values are what ultimately create their perceptions of everything — including the aggregate industry. Even today what people believe about the aggregate industry sometimes falls far short of reality. This perception was reflected in a 2002 survey by Aggregates Manager, which identified the number one challenge facing the aggregate industry as “the need to properly educate the public about the need for mining and the true value of the contributions that aggregate products make to the standard of living enjoyed by today’s society” (AggMan, April 2002, p. 6,7). But this is not news to the industry.
So what can be done to change peoples’ beliefs and attitudes? Education is one answer. In recent years, many aggregate producers and state associations have made strong efforts to become involved in their communities.
But outreach does not have to be complex or expensive. I have two simple examples from emails recently sent to me. Fred, a fellow who sells crushing plants for a living, was invited to make a presentation about geology and aggregate resources at his son’s Cub Scout meeting. He accepted the invitation, and there were more parents at the meeting than kids. The adults were totally unaware about where rock comes from, but were fascinated to learn. The kids loved the rocks! And Dan, whose daughter is taking a geology class at college, sent a copy of “The Aggregate Handbook” to his daughter’s geology professor, just to broaden the professor’s perspective.
Perhaps in Fred and Dan’s small parts of the world there are people whose beliefs and values concerning aggregate operations have been changed.

William H. Langer is a geologist with the Mineral Resources Team of the U.S. Geological Survey.

June 2003 Carved in Stone Beliefs and Values: A Product of Our Times				Beliefs and Values: A Product of Our Times A society’s values and actions are based on what is deemed important at a particular stage in history. By Bill Langer A few nights ago I was in my workshop when the motor on my lathe started to sputter. A couple of sparks, a whiff of ozone, and the motor died. Fortunately, I had a spare motor waiting to be used. Both the dead motor and the spare were 25-year-old items that I had extracted from clothes dryers discovered in impromptu trash heaps when I doing fieldwork during the late 1970s. While I was trying to figure out the wiring arrangement for my “new” motor, I started thinking about those trash heaps, and the way people looked at the environment back in “the good ole days.” As a kid, during the 1950s and 1960s, my dad and I would take our household trash to the town dump. And believe me, it was a dump, not a sanitary landfill. One of my Saturday chores was to burn the paper in a wire basket in the back yard. We cooked potatoes covered with mud in the piles of leaves we burned in the street. We killed insects with a hand-pumped atomizer that delivered a spray containing DDT. We killed weeds with nasty herbicides. Today, these activities are considered “bad.” But this is what nearly everybody did in my hometown, and many other towns, during the 1950s and 1960s. And worse. People dumped trash (including clothes dryers) alongside the road. Agricultural practices included the heavy application of persistent pesticides and herbicides. Industrial practices sometimes resulted in the release of toxic substances, and industrial wastes sometimes were carelessly buried. In some places, timber harvesting and mineral resource extraction were conducted with little or no regard for environmental consequences. We were a product of our times. The point is that most of our activities in the past were not done out of malice or lack of caring. My dad always cared for the environment, and taught me to do likewise. We recycled cans, bottles, and newspapers before recycling was cool. Our activities, and those of society in general, were based on the beliefs and values of the time. But those beliefs and values changed as society became more aware of its impact on the environment. And as beliefs and values changed, protection of the environment took on a new importance. By the early 1970s, my hometown had a genuine landfill. During the 1970s, cities and suburbs were growing by leaps and bounds, and construction of the Interstate Highway System was in full swing. The demand for aggregate grew accordingly. This increased demand, combined with the need to locate operations near the market areas, created a situation where people had many more opportunities to come in contact with aggregate operations. This contact sometimes resulted in conflict, and conflicts also changed people’s beliefs and values. By the early 1990s, applications for aggregate operations became rallying points for citizen action. According to Anthony Bauer, a former professor at Michigan State University, citizens tended to judge the aggregate industry based on past egregious actions or poor standards practiced by a few members of the industry, rather than the more enlightened practices being employed by the majority of the industry at the time. The public’s beliefs, as outdated as they were, created a situation where reason and compromise suffered in the local zoning process. As far as the mining industry was concerned, citizen participation had changed from participatory government to absolute opposition groups. Basically, peoples’ beliefs and values are what ultimately create their perceptions of everything — including the aggregate industry. Even today what people believe about the aggregate industry sometimes falls far short of reality. This perception was reflected in a 2002 survey by Aggregates Manager, which identified the number one challenge facing the aggregate industry as “the need to properly educate the public about the need for mining and the true value of the contributions that aggregate products make to the standard of living enjoyed by today’s society” (AggMan, April 2002, p. 6,7). But this is not news to the industry. So what can be done to change peoples’ beliefs and attitudes? Education is one answer. In recent years, many aggregate producers and state associations have made strong efforts to become involved in their communities. But outreach does not have to be complex or expensive. I have two simple examples from emails recently sent to me. Fred, a fellow who sells crushing plants for a living, was invited to make a presentation about geology and aggregate resources at his son’s Cub Scout meeting. He accepted the invitation, and there were more parents at the meeting than kids. The adults were totally unaware about where rock comes from, but were fascinated to learn. The kids loved the rocks! And Dan, whose daughter is taking a geology class at college, sent a copy of “The Aggregate Handbook” to his daughter’s geology professor, just to broaden the professor’s perspective. Perhaps in Fred and Dan’s small parts of the world there are people whose beliefs and values concerning aggregate operations have been changed. William H. Langer is a geologist with the Mineral Resources Team of the U.S. Geological Survey.