Gold Environmental Impact: The Hidden Cost of Our Gilded Obsession

I walked past one of those ridiculous jewelry stores the other day. You know the type—spotless glass, soft lighting, gold chains laid out on velvet like they’re sacred artifacts. Not a price tag in sight because if you have to ask, you’re not their kind of customer.

And all I could think was: how the hell did we let this metal become worth tearing up the planet for?

Gold’s been treated like the ultimate flex for centuries. Kings stole it, empires crumbled over it, rich assholes hoard it like it’s the only thing standing between them and financial ruin. And yeah, it’s rare, it doesn’t rust, and it catches the light all nice and pretty. But do any of those things justify what it takes to rip it out of the ground?

Because here’s the part no one likes to look at: the wreckage it leaves behind.

Entire forests wiped out. Rivers poisoned. Land chewed up and spit out. Open-pit gold mining—basically the main way we dig this stuff up—turns mountains into craters big enough to swallow towns. The process? It’s filthy. Cyanide, mercury—pure industrial-grade poison getting dumped into the earth.

Take the Amazon gold rush for example. It’s exactly what it sounds like. Thousands of illegal mining crews hacking away at the jungle, leaving behind dead zones where nothing will ever grow again. All so some hedge fund guy can shove another gold bar into his vault next to his limited-edition Rolex collection.

And that whole “gold is a safe investment” thing? Yeah. Let’s be honest: gold is only valuable because we all pretend it is. There’s no law of nature that says this particular metal matters more than iron or copper or tin. It’s just something we’ve put on a pedestal for so long that nobody questions it.

Same goes for jewelry. When people buy gold chains, they’re not thinking about mercury in rivers or wrecked forests. They just see status. Wealth. A shortcut to looking like they’ve “made it.”

But here’s what I keep asking myself: If gold wasn’t rare, would we even care about it?

If you could scoop it up off the sidewalk like gravel, would people still kill for it? Destroy entire landscapes for it? Probably not. Which tells you exactly what gold really is—just another commodity with centuries of good PR.

Look, I’m not saying you should melt down your wedding ring or throw your grandma’s necklace in the trash. Gold isn’t going anywhere. I just think it’s crazy how we’ve accepted blowing up mountains and poisoning rivers just to turn metal into bracelets.

Seems like a scam we’ve all been running for so long, we forgot to question it.