`You want a greener economy, you need responsible mining. No ifs or buts around that. But are we responsible?’
HUMAN development is a history of trade-offs.”
So intoned a wizened Filipino who was being interviewed by NBC News, the giant US network, for a two-minute story on the growing demand for nickel as a result of the growing demand for electric vehicles worldwide, and its impact on the environment.
Electric vehicles are battery powered. And today’s battery technology uses a lot of nickel due to its many positive properties such as heat resistance and very high melting point.
The gist of the story is that we sacrifice a part of Earth in order to achieve the life we want, as the questioner intoned. And that’s what provoked the answer about trade-offs.
Actually there was more to the answer than that. The interview lasted 30 minutes but less than one minute was ever used in the news report. So imagine what was left on the cutting floor?
I should know; I was the interviewee.
Since mankind moved away from being a caveman to become today’s Omicron generation, life has all been about trade-offs. The Industrial Revolution, for example, was a major step in human progress, but it also meant harsh working conditions and coal-fired factories and the rise of slum areas. Urbanization followed, which meant, guess what, clearing large tracts of forests and erecting new cities and suburbs. Locomotive trains and bicycles gave way to the internal combustion engines that spawned the auto industry which in turn fueled (pun intended) the fossil fuel industry, freeways, and the like. International trade blossomed, urbanization became global and now you have global warming. (Of course this is squeezing and simplifying centuries of human progress into a few sentences!)
I guess some people would trade all that away and go back to living in caves with sticks and stones. Especially those who hate mining to the core. Jeesas.
Speaking of Jesus, I am most amused when it is a member of the clergy who is anti mining. Especially the Roman Catholic clergy whose rites and rituals always incorporate the use of chalices and crosses and what have you made from metals – gold, silver or copper but preferably gold – and even have chalices bedecked with gemstones that could only have been taken out of the earth thanks to…?
Why don’t they ever use plastic chalices instead?
That we still argue over the necessity for responsible large-scale mining is, I think, silly.
Unless you are willing to have your grandkids use the very same cellphone you use, drive the very same car you drive, ride the same planes, use the same X-ray machines, watch the very same TV sets and all, then responsible large-scale mining has to be accepted as part and parcel of life.
And if only those from the “civilized” West would eat with their hands, then who will need forks and spoons made out of stainless steel?
It’s interesting that so-called environmental activists raise a fuss over mining which is TEMPORARY land use, but see no issues in more roads and highways and malls and skyscrapers, which are PERMANENT land use. Not to mention that fact that under Philippine mining laws, a mining firm has to plant 100 trees for every tree that is disturbed. Imagine that. Even if somehow what only 50 trees are planted for every tree cut, when one clears an area with 50,000 trees, that means that 2.5 million trees will be growing in their place.
I’ll bet no diocese or NGO has planted that many trees ever, otherwise they would have posted those on social media using their latest iPhones or laptops.
You want a greener economy, you need responsible mining. No ifs or buts around that. But are we responsible?
Take it from none other than the late DENR Secretary Regina Lopez who visited Rio Tuba in Palawan in 2017. In a video released by the Mines and Geosciences Bureau itself, the late secretary is seen exclaiming “Pwede pala!” in response to the question “is responsible large-scale mining possible?”
It’s a crazy world to believe otherwise.
