What happens when particular resources become necessary for public good?
That is, does the world in general have the right to extract the resources necessary to manufacture solar panels and grid-scale batteries &etc even if the local people object, because replacing fossil fuel power is a necessity for the survival of the human race entire?
What happens when acquiring and using a resource becomes a requirement for treating human life with value?
Sorry, what biological change in humans made it such that humans as a species require electricity to survive? Or that made it a prerequisite to “treating human life with value”?
Methinks you are conflating maintenance of the human species and maintenance of your desired quality of life.
Sorry, what biological change in humans made it such that humans as a species require electricity to survive? Or that made it a prerequisite to “treating human life with value”?
Medical technology, for one thing. You can’t have modern medicine without electricity. Give up electricity and you drop life expectancy back to what it was in the early 1900s:
the mining of these resources must be done with respect and in cooperation with the people who would be harmed by doing so without respect and care. we must also take an approach of being considerate in our consumption habits, otherwise we’re just participating in eco-colonialism
Copper. The answers to necessary and to whom should be self-evident.
Other examples would be the rare earths which China has done so much work to acquire control over, and also sand for concrete which is such a high-value commodity that it has developed a global black market worth hundreds of billions of dollars, complete with international organized crime groups, and has caused a lot of environmental damage.
Ah, well that makes it easy then. You leave the people the fuck alone, and let them go on with their lives.
Why? Because the necessity is to some rich cunt who needs to exploit the natural resources of an area they have no larger claim to than anyone else, as well as the labour of whoever they can coerce into working there, to extract further riches for themselves. It is not about life or death. t is not about the betterment of a particular community, or society at large. It’s about profit.
This is only a necessity from a capitalistic lens. We have already extracted these materials, and they are out there ready to be reclaimed and reused. It just so happens that it’s more profitable to trample communities and destroy the earth to get more of it, rather than use what we already have.
That is the problem with capitalism. It is inimical to life and humanity, and cares only for profit. Capitalism is the paperclip maximiser.
It is not about life or death. t is not about the betterment of a particular community, or society at large. It’s about profit.
This is a nonsensical point of view. If we’re going to get out of our current climate problems we need to replace fossil fuel infrastructure with renewable energy sources as much and as quickly as possible. That’s going to mean more electrical infrastructure, more solar panels, more grid-scale battery systems, more wind turbines, more hydroelectric stations, etc., which in turn means more copper, steel, aluminum, silicon, and concrete.
Sure there’s profit motivation involved. It’s going to be a lot of fucking hard work and people gotta eat. But framing resource extraction for industrial use as only motivated by profit is so narrow-minded that this conversation can’t really continue until you take a few steps down from your high horse and adjust your extreme point of view to something more rational.
We have already extracted these materials, and they are out there ready to be reclaimed and reused. It just so happens that it’s more profitable to trample communities and destroy the earth to get more of it, rather than use what we already have.
There are already massive recycling industries in place for aluminum, steel, copper, and even lithium recovery from old batteries. Aluminum in particular is cheaper (more cost effective in terms of time and labor) to recycle than to mine and refine new ore. That’s great, but it still doesn’t produce enough volume of material, we still need more new material also.
There are also quarries that grind rock and old concrete down to make fine particles, but… it’s not the same as sand, it can’t be used in all of the same production processes. The result is more like very fine gravel than it is sand. There’s also an issue with a lot of concrete being reinforced with steel cables or rebar, which you can’t just throw into a rock grinder.
I don’t know why you’re talking about this as if it were all-or-nothing, that’s not a practical approach in the real world. It seems like you’re more interested in scoring holier-than-thou points than discussing actual solutions.
OK.
What happens when particular resources become necessary for public good?
That is, does the world in general have the right to extract the resources necessary to manufacture solar panels and grid-scale batteries &etc even if the local people object, because replacing fossil fuel power is a necessity for the survival of the human race entire?
What happens when acquiring and using a resource becomes a requirement for treating human life with value?
Sorry, what biological change in humans made it such that humans as a species require electricity to survive? Or that made it a prerequisite to “treating human life with value”?
Methinks you are conflating maintenance of the human species and maintenance of your desired quality of life.
Medical technology, for one thing. You can’t have modern medicine without electricity. Give up electricity and you drop life expectancy back to what it was in the early 1900s:
https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/global-average-life-expectancy-has-more-than-doubled-since-1900
That’s an awful lot of human life.
Methinks you have no real concept of what life was like 100 years ago.
It is an awful lot of human life, but it’s certainly not all human life, by any measure.
My tongue-in-cheek quip about human evolution was in response to your hyperbole about human existence being threatened.
Human existence is threatened. Just browse some of the articles at /c/climate@slrpnk.net :
France’s June heatwave caused more than 2,700 heat-related deaths
Warming Could Ravage a Third of Plants Used by Amazon Communities | Hotter temperatures and harsher droughts could cause Indigenous societies to lose many of the species they have used for medicine, r
The world’s oceans are warming at a record-breaking pace
Climate change causing more species to go extinct in temperate regions, UA study shows
It’s hardly hyperbole. The environment we live in is actively disintegrating. The effects of the damage are accelerating, right now.
The most effective thing we can do to address the problem is increase renewable energy sources: What actually works — right here, right now — to address climate change
That means more copper, steel, aluminum and concrete, for the whole world, as quickly as we possibly can.
the mining of these resources must be done with respect and in cooperation with the people who would be harmed by doing so without respect and care. we must also take an approach of being considerate in our consumption habits, otherwise we’re just participating in eco-colonialism
That sounds great… on paper. A very Disney ending to the long story of international resource conflict.
It also doesn’t really address my question, which is:
What happens when the extraction of a resource is necessary, but the local people object? What if they refuse to cooperate?
What kind of resource is that, what makes it necessary, and to whom?
OK.
Copper. The answers to necessary and to whom should be self-evident.
Other examples would be the rare earths which China has done so much work to acquire control over, and also sand for concrete which is such a high-value commodity that it has developed a global black market worth hundreds of billions of dollars, complete with international organized crime groups, and has caused a lot of environmental damage.
Ah, well that makes it easy then. You leave the people the fuck alone, and let them go on with their lives.
Why? Because the necessity is to some rich cunt who needs to exploit the natural resources of an area they have no larger claim to than anyone else, as well as the labour of whoever they can coerce into working there, to extract further riches for themselves. It is not about life or death. t is not about the betterment of a particular community, or society at large. It’s about profit.
This is only a necessity from a capitalistic lens. We have already extracted these materials, and they are out there ready to be reclaimed and reused. It just so happens that it’s more profitable to trample communities and destroy the earth to get more of it, rather than use what we already have.
That is the problem with capitalism. It is inimical to life and humanity, and cares only for profit. Capitalism is the paperclip maximiser.
This is a nonsensical point of view. If we’re going to get out of our current climate problems we need to replace fossil fuel infrastructure with renewable energy sources as much and as quickly as possible. That’s going to mean more electrical infrastructure, more solar panels, more grid-scale battery systems, more wind turbines, more hydroelectric stations, etc., which in turn means more copper, steel, aluminum, silicon, and concrete.
Sure there’s profit motivation involved. It’s going to be a lot of fucking hard work and people gotta eat. But framing resource extraction for industrial use as only motivated by profit is so narrow-minded that this conversation can’t really continue until you take a few steps down from your high horse and adjust your extreme point of view to something more rational.
There are already massive recycling industries in place for aluminum, steel, copper, and even lithium recovery from old batteries. Aluminum in particular is cheaper (more cost effective in terms of time and labor) to recycle than to mine and refine new ore. That’s great, but it still doesn’t produce enough volume of material, we still need more new material also.
There are also quarries that grind rock and old concrete down to make fine particles, but… it’s not the same as sand, it can’t be used in all of the same production processes. The result is more like very fine gravel than it is sand. There’s also an issue with a lot of concrete being reinforced with steel cables or rebar, which you can’t just throw into a rock grinder.
I don’t know why you’re talking about this as if it were all-or-nothing, that’s not a practical approach in the real world. It seems like you’re more interested in scoring holier-than-thou points than discussing actual solutions.