What a shame - abandoned mine sites!

Discussion in 'Australia, NZ, Pacific' started by m2catter, Feb 15, 2017.

  1. m2catter

    m2catter Well-Known Member

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  2. Sushisnake

    Sushisnake Active Member

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  3. Sushisnake

    Sushisnake Active Member

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  4. drluggit

    drluggit Well-Known Member

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    My first thought is why the political folks in Australia didn't require these firms to remediate their mining properties or produce reserve funds to do so if said mining operations were unsuccessful?

    Certainly, the tax wealth generated from these mines might have been reserved, and used for just this purpose. And yet, they were not?
     
  5. Zorro

    Zorro Well-Known Member

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    And projects like rehabbing these mines need to be near the top of the list for whatever is their equivalent to our EPA.
     
  6. PARTIZAN1

    PARTIZAN1 Well-Known Member

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    There was no regulations for doing away with mine shafts!
     
  7. Sushisnake

    Sushisnake Active Member

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    Well, they did require them to rehabilitate. They even requested and required funds from them for that purpose, they even received some funds, but they never asked enough to begin with and I would suggest they knew it was woefully inadequate at the time. We don't ask The Market to pay its way: it's fragile and easily frightened, poor little snowflake.

    Who Will Pay The $178 Billion Mining Rehabilitation Bill In Australia?
    (*)https://independentaustralia.net/bu...e-178-billion-mining-rehabilitation-bill,7772

    I can't agree with you that tax revenue raised from mining operations should pay for the rehabilitation: why should the public purse pay to clean up private bowel movements? Bank bail outs and environmental clean ups: that's some free ride you're advocating there.

    I seems it isn't just Australia that gives capital a free ride, either. The article below refers to public US land only. Mines on private land are not included:

    The problem with America’s abandoned mines
    (*)https://www.revealnews.org/article-legacy/the-problem-with-americas-abandoned-mines/

    Remember the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster? BP are back out there, still self-regulating, working a venture I believe is called 'Mad Dog'. No, I'm not kidding about the name.

    I don't think it's just my country and yours either, drluggit. The world stopped asking capitalism to pay its way in the late 70s. Before that, in the developing world. Bhopal comes to mind.
     
  8. Bowerbird

    Bowerbird Well-Known Member

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    Yep. They should be made to pay a high stipend yearly that they might reclaim a portion of IF and only IF they have rehabilitated the area
     
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  9. drluggit

    drluggit Well-Known Member

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    I suppose if you'd wish to take an adversarial position on this, fine. I would point out that communist and socialist governments haven't exactly been poster kids for environmental friendliness are they? So, sure, you can rail against the capital approach, but what is your alternative? China? N Korea? the failed Soviet Union? Have you seen the superfund sites they created for themselves? So, even in a demand economy, your concerns aren't being addressed.

    Seems to leave you with nothing but anger. Kind of sad, huh?
     
  10. Sushisnake

    Sushisnake Active Member

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    Amazing. Criticise capitalism and someone always drags the corpse of the USSR out of the crypt to play compare-ies between capitalism and 'socialism' as though it's valid.

    China's an authoritarian state, North Korea's a totalitarian state and 'communism' never got much of a hold on the world, let alone dominated it. We live in a capitalist world.

    The answer's right there in my previous post The world stopped asking capitalism to pay its way in the late 70s. : we stop giving it a free ride again. We start charging it appropriately for the damage it does and the infrastructure and asset assurance we the taxpayers provide it.

    Kind of simple, huh?
     
  11. Sushisnake

    Sushisnake Active Member

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    I've always thought they should turn them all into underground shopping malls, like they have in Coober Pedy.
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coober_Pedy
     
  12. drluggit

    drluggit Well-Known Member

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    The fallacy..It's like you look out into the world and refuse to see. So, in your mind, "we start charging for it", whatever "it" is, and to whatever standard you won't share. All you're really concerned with it that you express your SJW drivel, never consider the actual logistics of your demands, and sniffle when you're challenged to describe the world in which capitalism has impact. Ok, What about consumers? I assume you're working form a computer. Are you responsible, personally, through the purchase of your computer for the depopulation of lowland gorillas in the DR Congo? And if not, why? You seem to believe in SJ, ok, put your big boy pants on and help us understand how your willingness to consume doesn't also enter into the equation.

    This is so typical. Oh, those guys, they're bad, but not you, huh. You, personally, have zero skin in the game, only your personal indignation that blinds you of your own complicity in the problems you whine about.

    Maybe, we should just pass laws that instead say you can't buy stuff because your choices are so ignorant that you personally are unable to be sustained in the marketplace. Would that satisfy you?

    I expect that the very minute you find your own personal choices impacted, you'd change your tune.
     
  13. Sushisnake

    Sushisnake Active Member

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    Last time I looked we didn't live in direct democracies. We the people didn't decide the taxation laws anywhere. The people of the US didn't vote to reduce the percentage of the corporate tax take from 20% to 2% of the federal whole, for instance. The people didn't decide to bail out the banks and take on the banks debt themselves. The people didn't vote to make the Fed a 'bad' bank. In fact, last time I looked the world looked something like this:

    Study: US is an oligarchy, not a democracy
    http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746

    And note please: nowhere have I said we the people aren't complicit, but the people can be forgiven because "they know not what they do" as Christ put it. "They" being governments. It's done in the people's name, but it isn't done by the people.

    " I expect that the very minute you find your own personal choices impacted, you'd change your tune"? Sorry to disappoint your expectations, but I'm quite happy to pay my share of the tax take. I like luxuries like roads and hospitals. Supporting the state to provide rule of law and asset insurance works just fine for me. I just expect everyone to pay their way and the bigger your stake in the status quo, the more you're making out of it, the bigger the tax rate you should be paying. It's called progressive taxation: have you heard of it? The principle is that I'm ok paying my 32.5% but I'm not ok with Apple paying 0%.

    And if you go back a few posts, you'll see I wrote I was pretty sure the Australian government knew it wasn't asking for anywhere near enough money from the mining corporations to cover land rehabilitation. In fact, the article I linked to makes it bloody obvious the government knew.

    Ah! Enough already! I'll put the cape away and you can return to the RWNJ practice of shifting chairs on the Titanic while blindfolded.
     
  14. LeftRightLeft

    LeftRightLeft Well-Known Member

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    And at the moment, I am living right in the middle of this video
     
  15. drluggit

    drluggit Well-Known Member

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    LOL. So many words for "you're right". I don't accept personal responsibility for my actions. Got it.
     
  16. Sushisnake

    Sushisnake Active Member

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    I admire your belief that this individual- or any individual- has the might and power to change the corporate state through individual action. I don't share it. I think it's ideological garbage, Left and Right. But I admire it.
     
  17. drluggit

    drluggit Well-Known Member

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    What a remarkably convenient deflection. Not finding yourself responsible, it's quite less likely that you'd have to modify your own habits. Which, again was the point. Practice your preaching. You'll discover cool new sides to your own advocacy.
     
  18. Sushisnake

    Sushisnake Active Member

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    Very well, drluggit. I'll get onto rehabilitating 60,000 Australian and 40,000 US mine sites at sun up. I'll wear plastic gloves and take a shovel and garbage bag.
     
  19. drluggit

    drluggit Well-Known Member

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    Industrious. Best of luck. Perhaps you can become the Cezar Chavez of your nation. Brava.
     
  20. verystormy

    verystormy Active Member

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    What the mining companies have been allowed to get away with in Australia is appalling.
     
  21. Bowerbird

    Bowerbird Well-Known Member

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    I remember many years ago in Rockhampton at the regional Ag Show and there was a bloke with a big display promoting sand mining - now where they were proposing to mine was near Shoal Water Bay near Yeppoon, For those who do not know it it is pristine country which has had very little environmental impact

    This guy with the sand mining display was sitting there looking like he would rather be ANYWHERE else on earth - so I spoke to him.

    "You look like you feel about as welcome as a pork chop in a synagogue "

    "Yeah" he replied "What is it with the locals here?"

    "Mate - you will NEVER sell the idea of sandmining that coast - they all love the area and we have the bad example of no mine site rehabilitation sitting on our doorstep - Mount Morgan"

    Sand mining was stopped by the government soon after

    Where they wanted to mine
    [​IMG]

    Mount Morgan

    [​IMG]
     
  22. LeftRightLeft

    LeftRightLeft Well-Known Member

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    Mining, especially open cut mining, is one of the most disgusting environmental crimes. Not just the damage to the specific area, but the collateral damage is often greater, more widespread and of more danger to our health and well being yet alone the environment. I also don't know of any industry where backroom deals, shonky promises and outright illegal activites accur, yet pay less taxes and take more corporate welfare than most other industries. It's a lose lose situation for us and a win win situation for the mining companies and the pollies they grease.
     
  23. Bowerbird

    Bowerbird Well-Known Member

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    Tell me about it - I live in the North West do a satellite google one time because there are dozens of open cut mines in the region. Most have just been closed with no continuing rehabilitation of the area
     
  24. LeftRightLeft

    LeftRightLeft Well-Known Member

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    and I am living in the town in that video. In a locked air conditioned house, I wipe ove the glass coffee table and within hours the air that Dad and I breath has deposied a fine layer of dust. The Hunter region has a cancer rate of 5 times the state average, the whole ecconomy has shifted so locals find things rediculously expensive or just not available any more.
     
  25. Bowerbird

    Bowerbird Well-Known Member

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    WE have a $800 air fare to the coast let alone to the capital!!! Our town is infamous for the lead dust and the state government has shifted blame back onto householders not dusting often enough!! :roll: Down the road is an abandoned uranium mine - the only rehab done there was to flood the mine itself
    [​IMG]

    Mount Morgan was an entire mountain of gold - it changed hands numerous times to be the wasteland it is today
     

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