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 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.