Quote:
Originally Posted by supafamous
I have a really hard time in my head trying to square the circle of resource extraction being "responsible" - anything we dig up causes some form of environmental damage and then we burn it/manufacture it and it gets even worse. OTOH, we need the energy and we need the materials - I don't see any way around the need for digging stuff out of the ground.
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It certainly is possible, I mean you look at the forestry industry, we went from clearcutting every block we got our hands on to the variable block system and selective logging we do now. Along with the endless replantation ongoing by the companies. The forestry industry is now considered very sustainable, even the bi products which used to become waste like wood chips are often funneled into Hog Fuel plants like the one in Merritt or Fort St James and that product which used to be garbage is now used to generate power. Essentially none of the wood we cut down now is wasted, it all turns into something.
There is a large industry surrounding reclamation and remediation of our mine sites. This process when conducted properly after a decade or so, besides some minor variation in the topography, the site wont look any different than the surrounding nature. I've actually been on a few remediation projects, and the budgets are not small. One very successful example of this process is Nickel Plate Mine right here in British Columbia. Barrick Gold inherited the site during one of their M&A's and ultimately decided it was time to shutter the site that had been mined intermittently since like 1900. Significant resources were put into contouring the site, water treatment, stabilization of the site, etc. Today slowly the landscape is reclaiming that site, and eventually the few remaining manmade structures which is supporting that process will be removed and it will be considered done for good.
All a mine does (whether that be diamond, critical minerals, uranium, gold, etc) is dig up the ground, separate out the profitable part we want, and put the rest right back. At the end of the day there is zero difference between a gravel quarry and conventional gold mine if reclaimed correctly.
Oil sands sites are quite a bit more nuanced, and there is a lot more to unpack there, again it can be done, there's just a lot more to that.
I'd actually say that a conventional landfill leaves a bigger more disgusting scar on the landscape than most mines once they are closed properly.
EDIT: For transparency there is unfortunately plenty of examples of poorly run companies running amuck as well, and leaving disasters. There is several of these projects in the Yukon right now, a quick google search will bring them up and you can see for yourself the disaster that the Yukon gov't has inherited with some of these projects.