Most people remember the story of Jason and the Argonauts and the Golden Fleece. What most people do not realize is that the setting of the myth is substantiated by the discovery of the Sakdrisi Gold Mine. The Bronze Age mine was acknowledged to be 5,000 years old in the early 2000s, the oldest known gold mine in the world. Sakdrisi was declared a cultural heritage site archaeological and scientific excavations began in 2006 by Georgian and German academics. This status was revoked in 2013 by the Georgian Ministry of Culture and Monument Protection in order to allow RMG Gold, a Russian-owned mining company, to exploit the site for the remaining gold. RMG contributes to approximately 10% of the Georgian economy.

For several years now, Alexander Bedritsky, scientist and Putin’s appointed Presidential Delegate to the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has been voicing concern over Russia’s melting permafrost and the threat it poses to the global climate balance. He could not have asked for a better rallying event than the sudden, spectacular birth of the Yamal crater. This past July, a 100-foot wide section of Siberian taiga burst open on Russia’s Yamal Peninsula. This anomaly was the result of underground pockets of methane fed by years of Siberia’s slowly melting permafrost.