[jtlienwis]

The environmentalists killed a zinc mine in my state due to pollution concerns. Of course every pound of zinc not mined meant more steel without zinc protection, and hence more rust and more mining of iron ore. Arguments like this were completely lost on them.

[photochemsyn]

You can greatly reduce pollution associated with mining by taking various precautions, but they all have one thing in common: they're expensive to implement. For example, ore-hauling trucks in Alaska could use covered trailers to transport ore to reduce lead/cadmium dust, which gets into local food chains, for example in Alaska:

> "A 2001 National Park Service report documented elevated levels of lead, cadmium, and zinc in vegetation along the road, as well as near the storage area by the port. Concentrations of lead and cadmium, the National Park Service report stated, exceed levels found in “many of the most polluted countries in Central and Eastern Europe and all areas of western Russia.”

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/most-toxi...

Usually mining companies respond by saying that requiring them to implement such solutions ('regulation') is anti-free-market and makes them uncompetitive, as they then have to sell their ore on global markets at higher prices or accept much lower profit margins.

I've never actually seen an industrial pollution problem that didn't have a technical (if sometimes expensive) solution. Making those solutions the norm (kind of like requiring all homes to have toilets, etc.) is the reason why regulation is a good idea, it flattens the markets so noone can undersell using dirty methods.

[kwhitefoot]

So you mean that the mine should be allowed to pollute so long as the pollution is offset elsewhere?

[JohnBooty]

Depends on the offset.

It's the environmental version of the trolley car problem, except you have an unknown number of people on each part of the train tracks.

Is it a 1:10 offset, where (holistically speaking) the zinc mine will cause 10x environmental damage as it prevents? Then maybe it shouldn't happen anywhere.

Is it 1:1 offset and we're merely insisting that the environmental damage should happen in a poorer country instead of our own?

Is it 10:1 or 100:1 where every kilogram of zinc means that's 10kg or 100kg of steel that won't prematurely rust and need to be replaced, with another 10kg of 100kg of iron ore being mined elsewhere and transported at great environmental cost to replace it? Then from an environmental standpoint it's a huge win and we should probably do it.

It's extremely difficult to know.

[ozim]

Well yes - maybe not offset.

But if mining zinc lowers pollution from other stuff then yes.

[jyounker]

Is it that the argument was lost on them, or that there are better ways to mine for zinc and better locations to mine for zinc than the one in question?

[legulere]

You can recycle rusted parts though, so the loss is not as big as you would think.

[bongoman37]

Environmentalists are often short sighted and more interested in scoring political points than saving the environment. In a large part, they are responsible for global warming by killing off the nuclear sector.

[LatteLazy]

Or just mine the zinc elsewhere?!

[Aloha]

Eventually we'll run out of elsewhere.

Like pushing our pollution into the developing world is both immoral and harmful to our economy.

[MonkeyMalarky]

How much is pushed vs pulled?Many resource extraction projects are cancelled because they wouldn't be economical with all the added costs to ameliorate pollution. Perhaps if the developing world had higher standards and better enforcement, it would cost more and thus not undercut local production.

[swagasaurus-rex]

Sounds like a race to the bottom. If a poor community upheld its dignity and required additional costs to keep the environment from harm, it would get outbid by a more exploitative seller.

[MonkeyMalarky]

Absolutely. Add in some greed, corruption and ignorance and you've got a recipe for where we are today. And yet people blame environmentalists?

[fxtentacle]

Plus if they put it into the ocean, the pollution will flow back to us.