The National Forum   Donate   Your Account   On Line Opinion   Forum   Blogs   Polling   About   
The Forum - On Line Opinion's article discussion area



Syndicate
RSS/XML


RSS 2.0

Main Articles General

Sign In      Register

The Forum > Article Comments > In defence of industrialisation and mining > Comments

In defence of industrialisation and mining : Comments

By Jack Sturgess, published 27/12/2006

A low infant mortality rate does not happen without industrialisation: industrialisation does not happen without a reliable supply of metals and energy minerals.

  1. Pages:
  2. Page 1
  3. 2
  4. 3
  5. 4
  6. 5
  7. All
The article uses statistics selectively and simplistically. Poverty and institutionalised discrimination are not considered yet these factors are crucial when analysing national Infant Mortality Rates and Life Expectancy. So too when considering differences within nations. For example, Australia's IMR and LE rates are vastly different for the Indigenous and non Indigenous populations. As a non Indigenous Australian I will live 19 years longer than my Indigenous counterparts.

Israel's IMR is an enviable 7 per thousand while for the West Bank it's 20 per thousand. The institutionalised discrimination and apartheid that Israel practises are the telling causal issues here.

Cuba has a better IMR than the USA, despite the cruel US blockade. If the US had the same IMR as Cuba (6.22 per thousand) an additional 2,212 US babies per year would live. This year, the World Wildlife Fund recognised Cuba as the world's only country achieving sustainable development.

Bolivia's IMR is a tragic 53 per thousand and East Timor's is almost as sad at 47 per thousand. Taken holistically, statistics are a wake up call to us all to work to reduce and eliminate poverty and injustice. Taken selectively, as your writer has done, they can be used to justify an unequal world.
Posted by anna52, Wednesday, 27 December 2006 11:32:29 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
I would suggest the health of cultures is far more multi-dimensional than the author suggests.
For instance I would recommend Googling this title:
Closing the Barramundi Gap.
This is/was one of the most amazing programs that I have ever heard.Truly inspirational!
Also please check out 1. www.dabase.net/coopcomm.htm
Posted by Ho Hum, Wednesday, 27 December 2006 11:46:45 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Jack Sturgess appears to have no grasp of the fact that, in around 100 years, we have largely wasted a once-only endowment of energy and minerals resources which took at least tens of millions of years for geological and biological forces to create.

Most of the metals, upon which industrialisation depends, will run out in well under 100 years, and petroleum, upon which the world's agriculture and manufacturing depends, will very soon reach a peak after which, it will be impossible to stop a decline in production no matter how hard we try. The U.S's production of oil peaked in 1972 and Mexico's peaked last year.

Anyone who imagines an alternative to oil and other fossil fuels can be found, which will enable more than 6,500,000,000 humans to maintain and increase their current material standards of living, I suggest he/she read "Peak Oil and the Preservation of knowledge" by Alice Friedemann at http://www.energybulletin.net/18978.html

Here are some excerpts:

"At one time, the Energy Returned on Energy Invested (EROI) for oil was at least 100 to 1. We are reaching the point where the EROI of oil will be 1 and no more drilling will take place. It was while the EROI of oil was high that most of our current infrastructure was built. ...

"Evidence suggests that the EROI of corn ethanol is less than one, which means it takes more energy to make than you get out of it – an energy sink.

"Even if the highest claim of a net energy for ethanol of 1.67 were true, a much greater EROI than .67 is needed to run civilization. The 1 in the 1.67 is needed just to make the ethanol. An EROI of .67 has 150 times less energy than oil when we started building American infrastructure."

As a matter of urgency we should scale back our extraction and processing of all these resources in order to limit the damage being done to our environment and so that some may be left for future generations.
Posted by daggett, Wednesday, 27 December 2006 11:48:46 AM
Find out more about this user Visit this user's webpage Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Not only are current resources barely sufficient for the world's growing population those resources may be depleting, more expensive to extract or drowning us in waste products. I'd turn the problem around and ask what is a global population whereby everybody has access to comfortable services derived from renewable (or slow depleting) resources and recycling. Perhaps it is a third of the current number, in other words a global middle class of two billion or so with few people on the margins. As it stands the 'haves' have to brutally repress the 'have-nots' so as not to dilute their affluence. Now even the well-off are beginning to understand shortages of water and fuel. Maybe more people and more affluence is not the answer.
Posted by Taswegian, Wednesday, 27 December 2006 12:10:08 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Yes, Jack Sturgess' data is bulletproof. As long as you don't look behind the statistics, believable.
Like "there are no fairies at the bottom of the garden."
But,the fairy statistics could be on better ground.
Reading Sturgess, the sky - no, beyond the sky - is the limit.
Six and a half billion people will be enabled - have access to the joys and uninhibited social pleasures of a Paris Hilton. No, not her personal heat and energy, but that which underpins it - from expenditure on her essential rubber and chemicals; aircon and transport; condominiums and communications; copper and aluminium; a surfeit of hot dogs. The ultimate of human success - excess!
To get that ultimate joy, the minerals industry will have to gear up, increase the contribution it already makes to the grinding-up of rock. That currently amounts to 10% of world energy use. A large increase will be required, in spite of new heat-soaking technology for the task.
Mining and Industry are essential in enabling society in the developed world. A world which remains a component of biology developed during the course of about three billion years. A component which will always remain dependent upon, not just the "flora and fauna", but also insects, fungi, algae, atmosphere, etc.. We are part of an ecological web - inseparable from it.
Mining and Industry, in the manner of society's free-running dog, needs to be put on the leash, jerked back to heel. If it has its way in urging unlimited development without constraint, that will cause eventual calamity for the developed world and, for the undeveloped, even more misery than presently exists.
In the Nigerian oilfields - if only Industry had taken Mining to the marriage altar - how much better those people might have been we do not know.
But we do know with mathematical certainty that exponential growth, as presently exists, of human numbers would, it it were possible, eventually reach infinity. In the real world it cannot. Nor can mining and industry keep pace with it.
Posted by colinsett, Wednesday, 27 December 2006 12:28:16 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Jack Sturgess has made the correct call. Over the past 300 or 400 years of human history there has been an exponential growth in human knowledge and skills. Mining and mineral exploration has with out doubt been a major influence for good. So too has been the associated changes in social organisation, the capitalist philosophy and the legal framework permitting the development of free markets and the sovereign nation state.

Not to be forgotten are other wealth creating occupations such as in manufacturing industry and engineering. Mention must also be made to the major advances in medicine, biology and bio technology. The future looks bright indeed. Nuclear energy is undergoing a renaissance. Bio engineering with genetic modified plants and animals is heralding a new agricultural revolution. Then there is the remarkable promise of nanotechnology. It should be clear to all that mining and metallurgy is a pillar of our technological and scientific society.

Who can doubt that the trend line of human happiness is upwards and will continue in that way? Yes there have been some downs, but the trend is up. For instance it was reported a few weeks ago that in the last thirty years the number of people living on a dollar a day has halved.

Among the negative influences are the “against everything” Green and Environmental Lobbies. Like the bark of little dogs the Greens emit a mass meaningless yapping.
Posted by anti-green, Wednesday, 27 December 2006 12:30:04 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
  1. Pages:
  2. Page 1
  3. 2
  4. 3
  5. 4
  6. 5
  7. All

About Us :: Search :: Discuss :: Feedback :: Legals :: Privacy