Forgive me if you have posted this but this highlights what we are up against. Austria has not had a mining operation begin in the last 40 years.
https://energsustainsoc.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13705-025-00521-3 All shareholders should read this. And MB you must even up your biases.
Everything that increases the standard of living requires mining. This is exponential. The greater you want your standard of living, the greater your footprint on this earth is. You want smartphones, computers, internet, green energy, e vehicles, reduced emissions, they all need a lot of mining. You want good clean water, good clean air, good quality food, it needs machinery and plant and equipment all requiring mining. With AI this demand has just doubled. Austria start pulling your weight. Austrians pull your head out of the sand. Emissions and pollution elsewhere are still your emissions and your pollution. Your demand creates the need which creates the demand which creates the mining and subsequently, the emissions and the pollution. The only control you have over the pollution and emission is the control you have in your own backyard. What is the point of importing stuff from someone that just does not care about emissions or pollution, or working conditions or quality of life. Austria, EU, UK, USA look at your smartphone and ask yourself if you care. I mean really care. Do you really care where every part came from, how much pollution was made and how much emissions were produced. The only control you have is to eliminate the need, or start controlling the process by getting into the production chain.
One point is the lack of profit sharing back to the local communities. Putting up barriers to progress and expecting profits to be shared is blackmail. And gross naivety. Development is like building a community water pipeline. If someone takes most of the water (bribery) before it is built then it is not worth the time and effort to build it. If the community does not help to get it built (objections), why should they get a free share the water (charge them and hard). If too much water (taxes, royalties, profit sharing) gets siphoned off before it gets to the community, then why build the pipeline. If the pipeline gets built with the community helping, then the bucket at the end gets filled and overflowing and everybody gets water (everyone wins). But all the water is needed to fill the bucket (the pipeline gets built and even those needing their palms greased win).
Every action has 8 parts. It needs a trigger, It needs a solution to address the trigger. It also needs a plan.
Then we need approvals. Approvals come in many forms. Authority approval, social approval, environmental approval and peer approval.
Then you need energy. This takes many forms. It is personal energy. It is money. it is knowledge and it is skill. The money has to come from somewhere. The money men want to be certain that they get their money back, with interest. That is well north of 30%. If a community wants in, then they earn self-equity. You don't earn self-equity by objection. You earn it by support.
These 5 parts are all needed before you can start to act. to start to build. To start doing.
Once you do, there is a result.
That result has a consequence. That consequence can be good, it can be bad and it can be both. That is why we have step 4. But if step 4 does not happen, step 5 cannot happen nor does step 6 and there is no result. But there still is a consequence.
The consequence of non-action is that Austria and its citizens have to get their living standard from the goodwill of others and pay all of the price because there always is a price of living off others.
