Throughout the world the global population carries on to dramatically rise. The cities expand and we require ever increasing resources to keep our modern world turning. The extraction of metals, minerals and fossil fuels, their processing and consuming that drives and powers our modern world pose the greatest risks to our future and our environment. For we will be known as the toxic generation. Natures' dawn chorus has been silenced by our pervasive urbanity a constant background of noise and a pounding in our heads, in the cities and on the battlefields. These mortars at dawn and their dusty craters of rubble will be our ignominious legacy.