I didn't create any false dichotomy, I simply noted your original middlebrow dismissal of the article was based on the absurd premise that its criticism of a mining company for causing a problem and lowballing with compensation was analogous to the criticism meted out to those whose philanthropic proposals "observe or interact" with problems they couldn't fully solve. The mining company doesn't stand accused of observing problems whilst not doing enough to help, it stands accused of creating problems whilst paying off just enough to get a contract.
Nobody is suggesting the mining company is the "bad guys" for having an interest in making a profit. They are suggesting they might be the "bad guys" for allegedly exploiting the naivete of local residence to pay a pittance to wreck their environment.
Yes, they're bad guys. But reading it quickly I didn't see any cases of them suing people for having had their fields accidentally contaminated. Its possible for a person or company to be bad without being guilty of every bad thing anyone says about them.
"Environmental experts and local officials say the cost of the cleanup should not be shouldered by the Chinese government alone, but also by the rare earths industry and the global companies and consumers that benefit from these technologies."
The mining companies should bear the cost, since it was a cost that they simply ignored at the time. If that cost had been factored into their business, prices for their materials would have been higher (and the consumers would have paid).
Instead, like many businesses, they took responsibility for only the costs that they had to. In general, consumers should not shoulder the burden of corporations' bad business practices.
If true costs were considered, there would be far less materialism (and corresponding pollution).
All that said, sometimes everyone has to contribute to right a wrong. However, it's not ok that everyone pay for one party's past wrongs only to see other parties continuing to repeat those wrongs.
Seems like you agree then that the cost should not be shouldered by the government alone, but also by the companies who benefited.
The article mentions that most mining operations were illegal until recently and the Longnan government only managed to shut down the last of them in 2017. Some local officials probably lined their pockets by looking the other way, but the central government likely didn't see any of those profits.
Now that the industry is controlled by state-owned companies, stricter regulations were introduced, which is exactly the opposite of what you'd expect if the government were willing to tolerate the pollution in exchange for profit.
perhaps yes and perhaps no. Not entirely the same, but when you look at the contamination caused by chevron in the Ecuadorian amazon, billions upon billions of waste knowingly dumped into the land and the rivers due to the power of the company and lack of power of the state back then. It was simple more profitable to do this, so they did.
A problem for most developing countries, especially when the company is backed by a much more powerful country.
Compare that to small scale illegal miners. The scale at which they can pollute is a lot less and localised. Yes they damage, but do not have the potential to damage as the large corporations.
Ideally, legal mining / oil extraction would be heavily regulated and monitored to avoid (minimise) contamination.
But in remote areas of developing countries, the profit at stake is too corrupting to "both" sides. It is all too easy to see the developing country as being the corrupt partner (which it is) but many forget the corruption of the powerful side who set up the corruption in the first place. A chicken and egg situation. Was the country corrupted before, or was it made corrupt by the offer of money to chase bigger profit
>>The company extracted roughly 800,000 tons of copper and zinc before flooding the area, turning it into Goose Pond.
>>The former mine is now a Superfund site, and a 2013 study by researchers at Dartmouth College found widespread evidence of toxic metals in nearby sediment, water and fish. Cleanup costs, borne by taxpayers, are estimated between $23 million and $45 million.
Yup, that company successfully extracted the value and externalized the costs onto the taxpayers - they got the benefit and we hold the bag of crap.
Which is precisely why the laws were passed in the first place, because this was not an exception, but standard procedure.
If they want to relent and allow standard mining, then they need to require an up-front bond of the appropriate amount to fund the cleanup, on the scale of $100 million.
Anything short of that is utterly foolish (it's not like we're ignorant of standard mining practices).
<sarc>I'm sure the financial genius MBAs can figure it out (along with how to still screw the general public plebes). </sarc>
Im sure the lawyers thought of that angle, but the mining company currently doesn’t do anything to effect change so they probably won’t unless their customers (tech companies) demand a change.
It really is unfortunate. The mining company should build out proper infrastructure but I’m guessing they just delegate to (corrupt) locals.
This is no different than all the global environmental issues we’re facing with large scale production facilities (bottled water, petroleum, etc. are a huge problem too). The indigenous populations are getting fucked over because they live in remote areas prime for exploitation. Then the factories close down and don’t clean anything up.
I should point out this is also happening in developed countries like Canada and the USA. For instance, what is the difference between children mining cobalt and children being exposed to mercury poisoning because their rivers upstream there’s a paper plant dumping toxic waste into the food supply in Ontario, or petrol industry in Texas poisoning neighboring schools with chemical fumes.
One egregious example of this are the mining companies which create a toxic mess and then let the shell company go bankrupt. I can't imagine going into any community downstream of that and saying that the law protects them knowing that not a single penny of the extracted value will be recovered.
I feel like it's really common for people involved in energy extraction to tell the people living in a community "we promise it will all be fine". And then suddenly when things aren't fine, they'll pay the absolute legally enforced minimum (usually nothing) to those in the communities they've crippled.
People are right to be afraid, giving money to a few well owners in exchange for your entire water table potentially getting destroyed is a bad deal
When a radical action is proposed and someone disagrees with that action, it doesn't mean they are in support of the symptom.
In this case, it is universally agreed that child slave labor is bad. These lawsuits call for punishing a recipient many transactions away from the mining. It's not calling on the governments, nor the immediate companies involved. Nor is it calling for all parties who are recipients of cobalt, which would include end users. It is just piling onto the two minutes of hate surrounding a couple megacorps.
This is so clearly something that needs to be resolved through legislation and diplomacy. These companies have been purchasing cobalt legally (presumably). If they haven't, a civil lawsuit isn't the answer; criminal charges are.
Yeah... why are they singling out a certain software development company, in the first place? Trying to shut the coal mining industry down by pressuring one of the software suppliers with an organized mob rage campaign makes no practical sense, from an environmental activist perspective.
I think you’re making a slippery slope argument here where none exists. The damage Chevron did In Ecuador was exceptional. It was not run of the mill stuff but really gross pollution of the natural world. If you’ve not learned about this case I suggest reading up on it. It’s worthwhile to understand what corporations are getting away with out there.
"Contractors accidentally destroyed the plug holding water trapped inside the mine, which caused an overflow of the pond, spilling three million US gallons (eleven thousand cubic metres) of mine waste water and tailings, including heavy metals such as cadmium and lead, and other toxic elements, such as arsenic,[5] beryllium,[5] zinc,[5] iron[5] and copper[5] into Cement Creek, a tributary of the Animas River and part of the San Juan River and Colorado River watershed."
Note the words "contractors" and "accidentally". Also note that the EPA has taken responsibility for the accident.[1] If you think this reflects poorly on the EPA, you may wish to have a word with the United States oil, gas, and chemical industries.
[1] Yes, and refused to pay "on grounds of sovereign immunity, pending special authorization from Congress or re-filing of lawsuits in federal court."
Wow. Adani is super scummy, and from research when they were starting construction on a big mine in Australia we knew they were structuring their tax affairs to not pay any tax here [1], but all this is something else.
They have been suing a climate activist here for millions of dollars, and as part of it they had private investigators following him, his wife, and his children, including photographing his children while they were alone on the way to and from school. They were “unapologetic” [2].
Although from what I read of Adani’s human rights abuses overseas (such as forcing native tribes off their lands to build mines and infrastructure, and complete disregard for the environmental effects of their operations poisoning nearby communities’ air and water/food sources) this is a tiny drop in the bucket of that company’s scummyness.
Ranger may well be run to the highest standards...now. However it was not always the case [0].
I used to work for Western Mining Corp (early 90s), and am familiar with how 'patchy' adherence to environmental principles can be across a large organisation. I'm not implying malfeasance (or any other explicit cause).
A few other instances where Rio's failed to hold itself (or its subsidiaries) to the highest standards: Lassing, Austria [1]; Panguna, PNG [2].
Yes, that's where the government aspect comes in. But again, what you decry as "non-sensical" instead seems like it could also just be called "response of a community towards potential market failure modes." You are ascribing moral blame to just one side of a more complicated situation. It would be like if all I was talking about is how big developers bribe local governments to get permits to build their shit - neither side is blameless, both sides are understandable, there isn't a clear easy answer to "reduce harm."
In an ideal world what you say may well be true. In this world, strip-mining and clear-cutting argue otherwise. As one who lives in one of those western states mostly owned by the federal government and one with an over whelming republican government I note that even at that, no one is reckless enough to sell off (or even sue to gain possession) the assets that this represents. I'd point out that in the 'bad' old days, private enterprise created one of the largest hazardous waste clean up sites in the country. The notion that this would all be somehow different now, flies in the face of history... I may not trust the feds, but I most assuredly don't trust private enterprise.
> Other environmental damage was found but it likely happened after Chevron was no longer involved in the project
If you're referring to the findings in the case of Chevron vs Donziger[0], Donziger claims that Chevron and the judge colluded. The claim is likely difficult to prove, but when you consider the billions at stake, Chevron have a strong motivation here to dissuade future activist work.
> They did however pay $40 million to fix some damage in 1995 and were granted indemnity by the Ecuador government in return.
Yes, but did that remediation include the the extensive damage to surrounding forests? And the poisoning of 100s/1000s of indigenous people? Cancers, malformed children, ruined water supply, etc.? The class action of the people impacted was warranted, if you've taken the time to look at some of the video. It could be that domestically based or other companies are partly responsible though.
Edit: Attracting inexplicable downvotes on my threads here, including this one which was basically asking for a source. Not sure why someone would downvote a comment like that unless they don't want people to dig deeper.
Nobody is suggesting the mining company is the "bad guys" for having an interest in making a profit. They are suggesting they might be the "bad guys" for allegedly exploiting the naivete of local residence to pay a pittance to wreck their environment.
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