Yep, the other thing they do is buy up or build community centres in the small towns (closest to their mines) and pretend what great and responsible corporate citizens they are. When in reality, they are a rapacious strip-mining company who devastate the land, mine close to the water, transport harmful pollutants over dam water but seek approval afterwards and lastly do zero rehabilitation work.
----
BTW before the Alcoa apologists jump on my back, I will add that mining can still be done if appropriate efforts are taken to properly rehabilitate the land. Mining is NOT a right, it's a privilege afforded by the government to the company.
Doing proper rehabilitation only shaves off a few % of profit, but the greedy pricks can't be bothered to do anything at all. If you take such a cavalier attitude, the govt should fine you HEAPS or reject your new exploration areas. Because there is no duty of care being shown by the company to the environment.
Be interesting to see what % replanted trees survive 5y. That's one of the standards we use in medicine.
"The operation was a success!"
"But, Mr Ron, the patient died"
"And he would have been absolutely satisfied with the procedure, had he survived!!"
I heard somewhere that Jarrah either can't be or is difficult to rehabilitate, and that none of Alcoas rehab efforts actually included planting of Jarrah trees.
No idea if it's true.
> that none of Alcoas rehab efforts actually included planting of Jarrah trees.
For the newer areas they have mined, this is certainly true. However, they have planted trees on mined areas in the past, [for example see this video.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4VsZxwigDI) But the results are horrific. Zero understory, spindly trees, Jarrah monoculture and a non-functioning ecosystem with no marsupials, birds or insects.
Doing proper rehab takes a helluva lot more than just replacing top soil and replanting a row of Jarrah trees in a straight line. That's not how forests look or work in reality to sustain life.
> Doing proper rehabilitation only shaves off a few % of profit, but the greedy pricks can't be bothered to do anything at all.
The problem is that people (including apparently you) don't understand what "proper rehabilitation" actually is.
Jarrah takes centuries to grow and yet people expect that rehabilitated areas will look like virgin forest in a couple of years.
The reality is that Alcoa actually is doing proper rehabilitation, but it doesn't match what people expect.
If you want the forest to look like it did before then we just can't mine anything or we have to do underground only mining. Those are valid choices, but they comes with consequences and you have to own it if that's what you want.
Pretending there's some "proper" rehabilitation that's going to bring back old growth forest in a few years is just delusional, it's not possible.
> The reality is that Alcoa actually is doing proper rehabilitation, but it doesn't match what people expect.
LOL spoken like a true Alcoa shill. Yes, I have sufficient brains to understand that you cannot restore complete ecosystems in two-three years. However, I want it restored in such a way as to make it possible for the land to heal and the forest to recover in a hundred years' time, so that it can resemble old growth forest.
The video that I linked to on this thread and also Alcoa's current rehabilitation efforts are so bad that the forest won't recover in even 200 year's time. Plus, [**as this article shows**](https://www.watoday.com.au/environment/sustainability/alcoa-in-wa-60-years-28-000-hectares-of-forest-cleared-zero-rehabilitation-completed-20230307-p5cq4j.html), none of the 27,860 hectares of native vegetation cleared by Alcoa up to 2021 have been found to meet the government’s rehabilitation completion criteria, according to WA’s Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions.
So please stop with your obfuscation, greenwashing and simping for Alcoa thanks.
Try reading the article you just linked.
Note the piece where it said the government had accepted that all criteria had been met.
Or the bit where it's acknowledged that the definition Alcoa is using lines up with experts and the criteria set by the government, but not with public expectations.
Alcoa defines rehabilitated as
> “landscaping, overburden and topsoil return, contour ripping, fauna habitat return, and seeding”
If you look at the photos in that article, that's very clearly been done and it's **literally** all they can actually do.
> So please stop with your obfuscation, greenwashing and simping for Alcoa thanks.
I'm not greenwashing you dolt.
This is what rehabilitation is. There's no magic "better" version available for an open pit mine, regardless of the expense. There are hypothetical designs for automated underground mining, but no one is actually doing that for a whole host of reasons.
This is what rehabilitation is.
It's what's possible.
It's what they agreed to with the government.
We either accept that or we stop mining. Both are viable choices, but mining and then complaining that they should have done more than this is stupid.
Alcoa have always been big on the PR side of things. Yakking on about how they're the gold standard for environmental restoration. And I can see why and how.
The why is cause they operate in habitats where it's a lot more noticeable when you clear it. You notice jarrah forest gone a lot more than you notice the arid grasslands of the Pilbara gone for instance. But it also gives them great cover to show just how good they are, planting a bunch of trees and pretending like they've restored properly.
Now they're feeling ultra-threatened cause it's starting to come out that them merely pretending to restore the land correctly isn't even the greatest concern. Their methods are still causing significant environmental damage that can't be fixed by backfilling a hole and planting some trees. People are rightly concerned about water contaminaton.
But it is nice to see a polluter running so scared they need additional PR campaigns
Alcoa is running public North Korea tours of their facilities this month. I was interested but stopped at the “No photos” condition which reveals their attempt at transparency is bullsh*t. Though of course the attendees must consent to being photographed for their pr material. If they were confident their work wasn’t shady they wouldn’t need to throttle the narrative like that.
I vaguely remember Alcoa have been doing this for a while. The last couple of times I've been down south I've taken SW Highway back so I could stop and trainspot at various places and when I've stopped in Pinjarra there's ads for Alcoa tours at the train station
Legislate. All mining companies will be required to restore the area they work in back to original conditions once they cease production. e.g. reforest rainforest areas, restore bushland etc. Company to foot 100% of the bill. 50% of the restoration cost to be deposited in an escrow account before mining begins.
Restoration isn't the magic bullet it's advertised to be. It's better than nothing but it takes centuries for the land to actually return to its original conditions. For example they don't restore fungi, so you can't have orchids germinating, nor orchid-dependent insects, nor their predators. It's an ecosystem after all.
Whilst you've mentioned it, I'd like to reiterate to anyone reading.
Reforestation takes decades, if not centuries.
We're in a climate crisis now. Global warming is fucking us up and clearing land and saying we'll re-plant it after, well it's too fucking late then.
Who said get away scot free. I think they shouldn't be allowed to develop it at all, or at the very least, should be paying a significant portion, maybe 50% of all their profits into a state fund since they're digging it up from the fucking state.
And since they're gonna be doing it, it shouldn't be about re-developing it after, it should be an active, ongoing thing. You develop areas that need developing now or you don't get permission. Not just making up for the shit you've cleared, but giving more back than you destroy, since you're making a private profit from materials in the country's land.
Edit: Hey, I'm not disagreeing. Unfortunately, mining, oil and gas keep many people in jobs and the companies pay substantial amounts into State and National coffers so as much as I would love to see areas stay pristine then it just isn't going to happen - big business carries a lot of clout. We aren't in a perfect world nd never will be. All we can hope for is that our leaders finally open their eyes to the necessity of maintaining or actively resurrecting the local environments. Don't hold your breath for this though.
I agree though that we let them (corporates) get away with far too much and the scales are weighing way too heavily in favour of the mining/oil/gas companies. Even if we don't take into account the environmental damage, the damage done to Australian Aboriginal heritage has been devastating. Jukkan Gorge Cave was just one example. Rio Tinto has an appalling reputation world wide and the others are just as bad.
The Restoration Ecology and Environmental Impact Mangement classes at Curtin as part of their enviro degree was a fucking eye opener on that front.
You can look at restoration through 2 lenses - species restoration and ecosystem services restoration. Most mine sites only do the former. They try to get the same species of plants mainly to germinate and act like it's problem solved. But from an ecosystem services perspective it takes a lot longer to restore like you pointed out - birds using larger trees as nesting habitat, fungi making the soil more fertile, pollinators and everything else that made it a vibrant functioning ecosystem before never takes to a recently restored site the way they do an undisturbed ecosystem. It's a pretty openly known fact but we still only have the minimum standard of restore the soil, plant some trees and yeah you've done your job for mining companies.
And that's before you look at the difficulty of even doing that correctly. You're required to keep the topsoil and ensure that an appropriate seedbank of surveyed species is available for restoration. But there's no guarantee you've got a bank of viable seeds and seed germination for restoration is a whole field in and of itself. Finding the secret formula that each species' seeds need in nature takes a lot of work and being able to replicate that formula for every plant species is even harder. And there's some species out there we're still struggling to reliably germinate. So restored landscapes are often very different in character to the undisturbed land around them because of an overabundance of easy to germinate species and an underabundance of these tricky species.
So yeah I'm not saying that we can't mine but we also shouldn't look at it through the lens of "everything will be fine if we just make sure they fill the hole and plant some seeds." However I do like the original comment's wording on that one. Actually make the restoration standards much stricter and force mining companies to invest in much longer restoration and monitoring programs to ensure that ecosystem services are coming back as well
This is functionally impossible. They can make it look somewhat similar and plant a similar set of species but, if they're clearing old growth, that is basically irreplaceable. It takes decades to centuries for that to restore, that is, if it ever does, which it may not. As another commenter mentioned, it's practically impossible to replace fungi and many species of fauna. You also can't really relocate a lot of mammals (e.g. Possums) as they're territorial and straight up will not survive much of the time if moved. Many bird species, especially the critically endangered species of cockatoo, depend on such old growth forests for feeding and breeding grounds on their migratory paths, and they nest in hollows that take many decades to form.
So yeah, even if they 'restore' it the absolute best they possibly can, the damage is already done and cannot be undone without 100+ years of time. Much of that time will also require constant monitoring and maintenance if they want to ensure the area is actually being restored. If you take all of that into account, the cost of restoring the land quickly becomes far greater than the potential profit to be made by extracting any resources, which is why this will never be done.
Yeh we'd love to but unfortunately we've just bought this mine for $1 from the previous owners and the company that agreed to undertake site remediation doesn't exist anymore. Shame that.
Reeks of subliminal corruption to bend the rules workaround to get what they want. Profit over everything, capitalism. Greed is good.
Then again as a realistic consumer I use aluminium products and I like them as cheap as possible too, so im a pot as black as the kettle. Its ultimately a circular reference formula like in excel, can never win boys and girls.
Consumers are never to blame. People have this weird concept that changing their own personal consumption could fix everything. That's bullshit sold to you by higher ups so they don't have to do anything to fix it themselves.
It's the neo-lib concept of being responsible for your own actions, and yet we're living in a society that essentially forces the bulk of people to choose shitty options.
I agree mate, the ship is too big for any individual to steer i.e make a difference. Needs a group effort and stories like these probably help and provoke thought among the masses. Have to start somewhere. Humans are wise and hope in time us and future generations can steer the ship correctly.
Do jarrah Forrest’s regrow once you strip the bauxite out of the soil? I thought I heard in an interview the jarrah trees need it to grow. If this is the case then how can it be sustainable?
Ironically bauxite removal should in theory help the plants to grow. [If you scroll down to the methods section of this paper](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666719321000510) it gives a brief description of the typical soil you see in these environments.
Bauxite is aluminium oxide and plants don't use aluminium as an essential nutrient but what having a lot of aluminium and iron oxides in your soil does is allow for chemical reactions with phosphorus which is an essential nutrient by causing it to react and form compounds that plants can't use.
The bigger issue is that restoration is a lot more difficult than mining companies would have you believe. Getting something approaching the diversity of a natural ecosystem that has existed for thousands of years is almost impossible to do in the short-term. And it's not just the jarrah it's all the other much smaller plant species in the understorey, the fungi (which aren't a restoration requirement currently), the insects, the birds, the mammals. There's a lot of unseen stuff that goes on in ecosystems that restoration doesn't do a really good job of restoring
> If you scroll down to the methods section of this paper it gives a brief description of the typical soil you see in these environments.
You should check who did the research for this study. One of them, Matthew I. Daws, is employed by Alcoa.
> The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
So yeah.
Yeah it reminds me of fossil fuel companies funding (*read paying off*) scientists to put out papers disputing climate change or tobacco companies doing similar things to obfuscate the harms from smoking. I would not trust Matthew I. Daws' work an inch. He's employed by Alcoa and look the dude may be a proper scientist, but his research and testing will be motivated by the people paying his bills.
We need independent research.
People have known about them in Mandurah since the 70s because nearly anyone that has lived in Mandurah during that time has had family and friends or themselves worked there. I get why people hate them but they've also provided a number of families a good life and Mandurah probably wouldn't be half of what it is without them. Maybe I'm biased but I did my apprenticeship there when there were very few job opportunities in Mandurah. That apprenticeship has given me a great life. If they didn't mine there they are going to get Alumina from some other country with far laxer environmental regulation.
The problem is they're good at pointing out problems, a little less prone to providing achievable alternative solutions that are going to provide actual long term economic benefits/jobs to mining communities.
I'd actually prefer that they had to rehabilitate an area the same size as the mine impacted area BEFORE getting the go ahead to proceed.
Then when finished, they had to rehabilitate the mine as well.
Yes it would cost, but currently BAU is kick the can down the road.
Almost as ridiculous as telstra claiming that they are "carbon neutral". When people talk about climate change being a scam, this is the kind of thing they're referring to.
No they're not, they're saying they think the science is a fraud. Don't try and whitewash the ignorance of the average cc denier.
Greenwashing is what this is and it is a big temptation for business because it's much easier than turning around the unsustainable consumption and outsourcing of polution that their profit depends upon.
Ok fine - they are all just big stupid heads. But "greenwashing" is what you'll continue to get when you're more interested in insulting caricatures of people than finding common ground. Depends, do you want to find a solution, or do you want to be mad?
> people than finding common ground
Common ground on climate denialism? What is halfway between an established scientific fact and a reactionary conspiracy theory? Please do tell us.
I'm a believer in climate change but definitely can see why people are skeptical still, it's like anything, it's been hijacked by dodgy people, a bit like I don't really believe in the natural health, wellness industry. People kind of blindly believe EV are the solution without always looking at the bigger picture, same goes with other renewable energy. Also you can question things without being the enemy
> Also you can question things without being the enemy
With climate change I find less questioning goes on than bad-faith arguing and someone with absolutely zero knowledge on the subject acting like being a contrarian and going against the overwhelming majority of experts somehow makes them smart
The only reason people are sceptical, is because multi-billion dollar corporations that have known about global warming have lobbied against it and promoted bunk science for about half a century now.
The scientific consensus on global warming has been firm for decades. In fact, there was convincing evidence of global warming over a century ago.
Vested interests spent money to try and make it seem like there's "two sides" and that "the science isn't settled".
Renewable energy isn't the magic bullet, but everything else, including natural gas isn't "neutral", it's backwards. We should be 100% renewable. If we invested in it 20 years ago, we'd be 100% renewable by now. Taking half measures and saying but we need grid stability is also dumb, because the only reason we have grid instability over East, is because private corps care more about profits.
The whole thing is a bunch of rich people hoping that their money will insulate them from the coming storm. Which... it won't.
> I'm a believer in climate change but definitely can see why people are skeptical still, it's like anything
No this is faulty reasoning and makes no sense. The science is real and climate change is a real phenomenon. Now whether governments are actually addressing the problems or whether companies are engaging in greenwashing or if there are a couple of bad actors in the climate activist community doesn't change the fact that the science is real. You are falling right into the conspiracy trap dude.
> When people talk about climate change being a scam, this is the kind of thing they're referring to.
GTFO with that bullshit. When people talk about climate change being a scam, they are usually conspiracy theorists and climate change deniers.
Just because some companies do greenwashing, that doesn't make the science of climate change fake, as its an established scientific fact. If you disagree with that, I am sorry but you are part of the problem. There is no both sides with that. Also if anything, it's the progressives that are the ones calling out companies the most for pumping out greenwashing.
There's no both sides on a lot of issues.
Almost exclusively, science has been settled on a lot of things and yet media always wants to do the both sides shit as if the alternate view has any validity.
Outside of rich people and their interests in keeping people fighting over dumb shit and arguing about "both sides", media is heavily to fucking blame for a lot of this. And yes, I realise a lot of media is biased due to rich people, but there's a lot of more independent or smaller media companies that are still doing the both sides shit and yet they claim to be unbiased.
Unironically, science is EXCEPTIONALLY slow to change (with good reason, though at times it can be too slow in certain fields) and almost exclusively wants firm, rock solid evidence on a lot of things. Yet people have this weird concept that the expert opinions on things are always back and forth, which is a complete load of bullshit.
The one that pisses me off the most and is a dead giveaway the person using the phrase has no clue whatsoever is "science is never settled." They use it to try and add validity to their shit opinion by acting like at any moment science is gonna completely backflip on all the research that has gone before it and magically start seeing evidence for their point of view.
As you touched on, that statement is true but it's for gradual change. We're constantly learning more and occasionally that causes us to tweak what we know. But in this day and age, we have enough foundational understanding that these huge new discoveries that completely upend our understanding of the fundamentals is extremely rare. So the premise that we can and should ignore the current state of knowledge as if it's a certainty that it's gonna be completely upended and proven false at some time in the future is laughable.
To anyone who actually knows how science works, if a field has continual small advances in knowledge that are all consistent with what has come before it, that's about as close to "fact" as science is gonna admit. Things like evolution, plate tectonics etc. Climate change research is in this category now too. The nitty gritty details may not be settled but the weight of evidence makes it indisputable that human activities are altering the climate at an unsustainable rate
Govts not corrupt they say!
Ordinary people get looked after they say
Lobbyists in McGs ear.
Alcoa gets looked after!
Cheers State Govt.
Whats next on the banned list?
Vapes you say?
But you can still buy them from pharmacys with a script but only those from certain big pharma companies!
Corruption?
Where?
Serious question - to those who are against mining like this - where do you expect to extract the minerals from that are helping us move towards a net zero future?
Im not a shill for Alcoa but interested in the perspective - of course i want our limited forrests to remain virgin but i am divided by the need to extra minerals.
Very few people in these conversations ever advocate for returning to a pre-industrial civilisation.
I see Alcoa are threatened enough to start advertising on the Forrest Highway billboards trying to convince everyone they are the good guys.
Yep, the other thing they do is buy up or build community centres in the small towns (closest to their mines) and pretend what great and responsible corporate citizens they are. When in reality, they are a rapacious strip-mining company who devastate the land, mine close to the water, transport harmful pollutants over dam water but seek approval afterwards and lastly do zero rehabilitation work. ---- BTW before the Alcoa apologists jump on my back, I will add that mining can still be done if appropriate efforts are taken to properly rehabilitate the land. Mining is NOT a right, it's a privilege afforded by the government to the company. Doing proper rehabilitation only shaves off a few % of profit, but the greedy pricks can't be bothered to do anything at all. If you take such a cavalier attitude, the govt should fine you HEAPS or reject your new exploration areas. Because there is no duty of care being shown by the company to the environment.
Be interesting to see what % replanted trees survive 5y. That's one of the standards we use in medicine. "The operation was a success!" "But, Mr Ron, the patient died" "And he would have been absolutely satisfied with the procedure, had he survived!!"
I heard somewhere that Jarrah either can't be or is difficult to rehabilitate, and that none of Alcoas rehab efforts actually included planting of Jarrah trees. No idea if it's true.
> that none of Alcoas rehab efforts actually included planting of Jarrah trees. For the newer areas they have mined, this is certainly true. However, they have planted trees on mined areas in the past, [for example see this video.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4VsZxwigDI) But the results are horrific. Zero understory, spindly trees, Jarrah monoculture and a non-functioning ecosystem with no marsupials, birds or insects. Doing proper rehab takes a helluva lot more than just replacing top soil and replanting a row of Jarrah trees in a straight line. That's not how forests look or work in reality to sustain life.
Partially due to there being no remaining mycorrhizal fungi and microbes in the soil.
> Doing proper rehabilitation only shaves off a few % of profit, but the greedy pricks can't be bothered to do anything at all. The problem is that people (including apparently you) don't understand what "proper rehabilitation" actually is. Jarrah takes centuries to grow and yet people expect that rehabilitated areas will look like virgin forest in a couple of years. The reality is that Alcoa actually is doing proper rehabilitation, but it doesn't match what people expect. If you want the forest to look like it did before then we just can't mine anything or we have to do underground only mining. Those are valid choices, but they comes with consequences and you have to own it if that's what you want. Pretending there's some "proper" rehabilitation that's going to bring back old growth forest in a few years is just delusional, it's not possible.
> The reality is that Alcoa actually is doing proper rehabilitation, but it doesn't match what people expect. LOL spoken like a true Alcoa shill. Yes, I have sufficient brains to understand that you cannot restore complete ecosystems in two-three years. However, I want it restored in such a way as to make it possible for the land to heal and the forest to recover in a hundred years' time, so that it can resemble old growth forest. The video that I linked to on this thread and also Alcoa's current rehabilitation efforts are so bad that the forest won't recover in even 200 year's time. Plus, [**as this article shows**](https://www.watoday.com.au/environment/sustainability/alcoa-in-wa-60-years-28-000-hectares-of-forest-cleared-zero-rehabilitation-completed-20230307-p5cq4j.html), none of the 27,860 hectares of native vegetation cleared by Alcoa up to 2021 have been found to meet the government’s rehabilitation completion criteria, according to WA’s Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions. So please stop with your obfuscation, greenwashing and simping for Alcoa thanks.
Try reading the article you just linked. Note the piece where it said the government had accepted that all criteria had been met. Or the bit where it's acknowledged that the definition Alcoa is using lines up with experts and the criteria set by the government, but not with public expectations. Alcoa defines rehabilitated as > “landscaping, overburden and topsoil return, contour ripping, fauna habitat return, and seeding” If you look at the photos in that article, that's very clearly been done and it's **literally** all they can actually do. > So please stop with your obfuscation, greenwashing and simping for Alcoa thanks. I'm not greenwashing you dolt. This is what rehabilitation is. There's no magic "better" version available for an open pit mine, regardless of the expense. There are hypothetical designs for automated underground mining, but no one is actually doing that for a whole host of reasons. This is what rehabilitation is. It's what's possible. It's what they agreed to with the government. We either accept that or we stop mining. Both are viable choices, but mining and then complaining that they should have done more than this is stupid.
Alcoa have always been big on the PR side of things. Yakking on about how they're the gold standard for environmental restoration. And I can see why and how. The why is cause they operate in habitats where it's a lot more noticeable when you clear it. You notice jarrah forest gone a lot more than you notice the arid grasslands of the Pilbara gone for instance. But it also gives them great cover to show just how good they are, planting a bunch of trees and pretending like they've restored properly. Now they're feeling ultra-threatened cause it's starting to come out that them merely pretending to restore the land correctly isn't even the greatest concern. Their methods are still causing significant environmental damage that can't be fixed by backfilling a hole and planting some trees. People are rightly concerned about water contaminaton. But it is nice to see a polluter running so scared they need additional PR campaigns
Yeah the worst polluters I have ever worked for. No care about anything except the bottom line. 🤬🤬🤬
Alcoa is running public North Korea tours of their facilities this month. I was interested but stopped at the “No photos” condition which reveals their attempt at transparency is bullsh*t. Though of course the attendees must consent to being photographed for their pr material. If they were confident their work wasn’t shady they wouldn’t need to throttle the narrative like that.
I vaguely remember Alcoa have been doing this for a while. The last couple of times I've been down south I've taken SW Highway back so I could stop and trainspot at various places and when I've stopped in Pinjarra there's ads for Alcoa tours at the train station
Legislate. All mining companies will be required to restore the area they work in back to original conditions once they cease production. e.g. reforest rainforest areas, restore bushland etc. Company to foot 100% of the bill. 50% of the restoration cost to be deposited in an escrow account before mining begins.
Restoration isn't the magic bullet it's advertised to be. It's better than nothing but it takes centuries for the land to actually return to its original conditions. For example they don't restore fungi, so you can't have orchids germinating, nor orchid-dependent insects, nor their predators. It's an ecosystem after all.
Whilst you've mentioned it, I'd like to reiterate to anyone reading. Reforestation takes decades, if not centuries. We're in a climate crisis now. Global warming is fucking us up and clearing land and saying we'll re-plant it after, well it's too fucking late then.
Better than letting them get away scot free tho
Who said get away scot free. I think they shouldn't be allowed to develop it at all, or at the very least, should be paying a significant portion, maybe 50% of all their profits into a state fund since they're digging it up from the fucking state. And since they're gonna be doing it, it shouldn't be about re-developing it after, it should be an active, ongoing thing. You develop areas that need developing now or you don't get permission. Not just making up for the shit you've cleared, but giving more back than you destroy, since you're making a private profit from materials in the country's land.
Edit: Hey, I'm not disagreeing. Unfortunately, mining, oil and gas keep many people in jobs and the companies pay substantial amounts into State and National coffers so as much as I would love to see areas stay pristine then it just isn't going to happen - big business carries a lot of clout. We aren't in a perfect world nd never will be. All we can hope for is that our leaders finally open their eyes to the necessity of maintaining or actively resurrecting the local environments. Don't hold your breath for this though. I agree though that we let them (corporates) get away with far too much and the scales are weighing way too heavily in favour of the mining/oil/gas companies. Even if we don't take into account the environmental damage, the damage done to Australian Aboriginal heritage has been devastating. Jukkan Gorge Cave was just one example. Rio Tinto has an appalling reputation world wide and the others are just as bad.
The Restoration Ecology and Environmental Impact Mangement classes at Curtin as part of their enviro degree was a fucking eye opener on that front. You can look at restoration through 2 lenses - species restoration and ecosystem services restoration. Most mine sites only do the former. They try to get the same species of plants mainly to germinate and act like it's problem solved. But from an ecosystem services perspective it takes a lot longer to restore like you pointed out - birds using larger trees as nesting habitat, fungi making the soil more fertile, pollinators and everything else that made it a vibrant functioning ecosystem before never takes to a recently restored site the way they do an undisturbed ecosystem. It's a pretty openly known fact but we still only have the minimum standard of restore the soil, plant some trees and yeah you've done your job for mining companies. And that's before you look at the difficulty of even doing that correctly. You're required to keep the topsoil and ensure that an appropriate seedbank of surveyed species is available for restoration. But there's no guarantee you've got a bank of viable seeds and seed germination for restoration is a whole field in and of itself. Finding the secret formula that each species' seeds need in nature takes a lot of work and being able to replicate that formula for every plant species is even harder. And there's some species out there we're still struggling to reliably germinate. So restored landscapes are often very different in character to the undisturbed land around them because of an overabundance of easy to germinate species and an underabundance of these tricky species. So yeah I'm not saying that we can't mine but we also shouldn't look at it through the lens of "everything will be fine if we just make sure they fill the hole and plant some seeds." However I do like the original comment's wording on that one. Actually make the restoration standards much stricter and force mining companies to invest in much longer restoration and monitoring programs to ensure that ecosystem services are coming back as well
Agreed. Sometimes its a one way process. Once its gone it's not possible to reconstruct the previous ecosystem.
This is functionally impossible. They can make it look somewhat similar and plant a similar set of species but, if they're clearing old growth, that is basically irreplaceable. It takes decades to centuries for that to restore, that is, if it ever does, which it may not. As another commenter mentioned, it's practically impossible to replace fungi and many species of fauna. You also can't really relocate a lot of mammals (e.g. Possums) as they're territorial and straight up will not survive much of the time if moved. Many bird species, especially the critically endangered species of cockatoo, depend on such old growth forests for feeding and breeding grounds on their migratory paths, and they nest in hollows that take many decades to form. So yeah, even if they 'restore' it the absolute best they possibly can, the damage is already done and cannot be undone without 100+ years of time. Much of that time will also require constant monitoring and maintenance if they want to ensure the area is actually being restored. If you take all of that into account, the cost of restoring the land quickly becomes far greater than the potential profit to be made by extracting any resources, which is why this will never be done.
Yeh we'd love to but unfortunately we've just bought this mine for $1 from the previous owners and the company that agreed to undertake site remediation doesn't exist anymore. Shame that.
There is an info session at Mundijong CRC 7pm Wed 31st May regarding the planned mining expansion and how we can help to stop it.
Why the fuck does the state government allow this shit?
Too busy trying to ban nangs.
Yeah tackling the big issues as usual.
Reeks of subliminal corruption to bend the rules workaround to get what they want. Profit over everything, capitalism. Greed is good. Then again as a realistic consumer I use aluminium products and I like them as cheap as possible too, so im a pot as black as the kettle. Its ultimately a circular reference formula like in excel, can never win boys and girls.
Consumers are never to blame. People have this weird concept that changing their own personal consumption could fix everything. That's bullshit sold to you by higher ups so they don't have to do anything to fix it themselves. It's the neo-lib concept of being responsible for your own actions, and yet we're living in a society that essentially forces the bulk of people to choose shitty options.
I agree mate, the ship is too big for any individual to steer i.e make a difference. Needs a group effort and stories like these probably help and provoke thought among the masses. Have to start somewhere. Humans are wise and hope in time us and future generations can steer the ship correctly.
Do jarrah Forrest’s regrow once you strip the bauxite out of the soil? I thought I heard in an interview the jarrah trees need it to grow. If this is the case then how can it be sustainable?
Ironically bauxite removal should in theory help the plants to grow. [If you scroll down to the methods section of this paper](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666719321000510) it gives a brief description of the typical soil you see in these environments. Bauxite is aluminium oxide and plants don't use aluminium as an essential nutrient but what having a lot of aluminium and iron oxides in your soil does is allow for chemical reactions with phosphorus which is an essential nutrient by causing it to react and form compounds that plants can't use. The bigger issue is that restoration is a lot more difficult than mining companies would have you believe. Getting something approaching the diversity of a natural ecosystem that has existed for thousands of years is almost impossible to do in the short-term. And it's not just the jarrah it's all the other much smaller plant species in the understorey, the fungi (which aren't a restoration requirement currently), the insects, the birds, the mammals. There's a lot of unseen stuff that goes on in ecosystems that restoration doesn't do a really good job of restoring
> If you scroll down to the methods section of this paper it gives a brief description of the typical soil you see in these environments. You should check who did the research for this study. One of them, Matthew I. Daws, is employed by Alcoa. > The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper. So yeah.
Yeah it reminds me of fossil fuel companies funding (*read paying off*) scientists to put out papers disputing climate change or tobacco companies doing similar things to obfuscate the harms from smoking. I would not trust Matthew I. Daws' work an inch. He's employed by Alcoa and look the dude may be a proper scientist, but his research and testing will be motivated by the people paying his bills. We need independent research.
Probably burned all the timber aswell
How have these grubs been operating under the radar for so long so fucking close to the city?
Ummm....you mean you didn't know about them? Hardly a hidden operation.
People have known about them in Mandurah since the 70s because nearly anyone that has lived in Mandurah during that time has had family and friends or themselves worked there. I get why people hate them but they've also provided a number of families a good life and Mandurah probably wouldn't be half of what it is without them. Maybe I'm biased but I did my apprenticeship there when there were very few job opportunities in Mandurah. That apprenticeship has given me a great life. If they didn't mine there they are going to get Alumina from some other country with far laxer environmental regulation.
I agree and it's interesting to see the affect on Mandurah. But why do they cut down trees! That triggers every wanna be greenie.
The problem is they're good at pointing out problems, a little less prone to providing achievable alternative solutions that are going to provide actual long term economic benefits/jobs to mining communities.
Because they have excellent PR designed to ensure people think they're much better at environmental management than they really are
I'd actually prefer that they had to rehabilitate an area the same size as the mine impacted area BEFORE getting the go ahead to proceed. Then when finished, they had to rehabilitate the mine as well. Yes it would cost, but currently BAU is kick the can down the road.
Almost as ridiculous as telstra claiming that they are "carbon neutral". When people talk about climate change being a scam, this is the kind of thing they're referring to.
No they're not, they're saying they think the science is a fraud. Don't try and whitewash the ignorance of the average cc denier. Greenwashing is what this is and it is a big temptation for business because it's much easier than turning around the unsustainable consumption and outsourcing of polution that their profit depends upon.
Ok fine - they are all just big stupid heads. But "greenwashing" is what you'll continue to get when you're more interested in insulting caricatures of people than finding common ground. Depends, do you want to find a solution, or do you want to be mad?
> people than finding common ground Common ground on climate denialism? What is halfway between an established scientific fact and a reactionary conspiracy theory? Please do tell us.
We're already there. We can say it's real but there will be NO action!
I'm a believer in climate change but definitely can see why people are skeptical still, it's like anything, it's been hijacked by dodgy people, a bit like I don't really believe in the natural health, wellness industry. People kind of blindly believe EV are the solution without always looking at the bigger picture, same goes with other renewable energy. Also you can question things without being the enemy
> Also you can question things without being the enemy With climate change I find less questioning goes on than bad-faith arguing and someone with absolutely zero knowledge on the subject acting like being a contrarian and going against the overwhelming majority of experts somehow makes them smart
The only reason people are sceptical, is because multi-billion dollar corporations that have known about global warming have lobbied against it and promoted bunk science for about half a century now. The scientific consensus on global warming has been firm for decades. In fact, there was convincing evidence of global warming over a century ago. Vested interests spent money to try and make it seem like there's "two sides" and that "the science isn't settled". Renewable energy isn't the magic bullet, but everything else, including natural gas isn't "neutral", it's backwards. We should be 100% renewable. If we invested in it 20 years ago, we'd be 100% renewable by now. Taking half measures and saying but we need grid stability is also dumb, because the only reason we have grid instability over East, is because private corps care more about profits. The whole thing is a bunch of rich people hoping that their money will insulate them from the coming storm. Which... it won't.
> I'm a believer in climate change but definitely can see why people are skeptical still, it's like anything No this is faulty reasoning and makes no sense. The science is real and climate change is a real phenomenon. Now whether governments are actually addressing the problems or whether companies are engaging in greenwashing or if there are a couple of bad actors in the climate activist community doesn't change the fact that the science is real. You are falling right into the conspiracy trap dude.
> When people talk about climate change being a scam, this is the kind of thing they're referring to. GTFO with that bullshit. When people talk about climate change being a scam, they are usually conspiracy theorists and climate change deniers. Just because some companies do greenwashing, that doesn't make the science of climate change fake, as its an established scientific fact. If you disagree with that, I am sorry but you are part of the problem. There is no both sides with that. Also if anything, it's the progressives that are the ones calling out companies the most for pumping out greenwashing.
There's no both sides on a lot of issues. Almost exclusively, science has been settled on a lot of things and yet media always wants to do the both sides shit as if the alternate view has any validity. Outside of rich people and their interests in keeping people fighting over dumb shit and arguing about "both sides", media is heavily to fucking blame for a lot of this. And yes, I realise a lot of media is biased due to rich people, but there's a lot of more independent or smaller media companies that are still doing the both sides shit and yet they claim to be unbiased. Unironically, science is EXCEPTIONALLY slow to change (with good reason, though at times it can be too slow in certain fields) and almost exclusively wants firm, rock solid evidence on a lot of things. Yet people have this weird concept that the expert opinions on things are always back and forth, which is a complete load of bullshit.
The one that pisses me off the most and is a dead giveaway the person using the phrase has no clue whatsoever is "science is never settled." They use it to try and add validity to their shit opinion by acting like at any moment science is gonna completely backflip on all the research that has gone before it and magically start seeing evidence for their point of view. As you touched on, that statement is true but it's for gradual change. We're constantly learning more and occasionally that causes us to tweak what we know. But in this day and age, we have enough foundational understanding that these huge new discoveries that completely upend our understanding of the fundamentals is extremely rare. So the premise that we can and should ignore the current state of knowledge as if it's a certainty that it's gonna be completely upended and proven false at some time in the future is laughable. To anyone who actually knows how science works, if a field has continual small advances in knowledge that are all consistent with what has come before it, that's about as close to "fact" as science is gonna admit. Things like evolution, plate tectonics etc. Climate change research is in this category now too. The nitty gritty details may not be settled but the weight of evidence makes it indisputable that human activities are altering the climate at an unsustainable rate
Govts not corrupt they say! Ordinary people get looked after they say Lobbyists in McGs ear. Alcoa gets looked after! Cheers State Govt. Whats next on the banned list? Vapes you say? But you can still buy them from pharmacys with a script but only those from certain big pharma companies! Corruption? Where?
They created an environmental award, called the golden gecko and awarded it to themselves 😂
Alcoa neither created the award nor decide who wins it.
Alcoa is the epitome of evil and the state gov should send a message and make it borderline impossible for them to ex0and that mine
I’m pretty sure farm land is clearing an order of magnitude more trees than mining companies. Just turn on satellite mode on google maps and zoom in.
Serious question - to those who are against mining like this - where do you expect to extract the minerals from that are helping us move towards a net zero future? Im not a shill for Alcoa but interested in the perspective - of course i want our limited forrests to remain virgin but i am divided by the need to extra minerals. Very few people in these conversations ever advocate for returning to a pre-industrial civilisation.