“We oppose metals mining because it has been technically and scientifically proven that mining is not viable in the country,” the environmentalist Luis González told reporters.
So you don’t have to worry about this then:
El Salvador overturns metals mining ban, defying environmental groups
President Nayib Bukele pushed for the legislation that will grant government sole authority over mining activitiesEl Salvador’s legislature has overturned a seven-year-old ban on metals mining, a move that the country’s authoritarian president, Nayib Bukele, had pushed for to boost economic growth, but that environmental groups had opposed.
If it’s not possible to do then it won’t happen. Doesn’t matter what the law is, does it?
At lesat we now know why the President was making that absurd claim that there was $3 trillion of gold there. Rhetoric to get the bill passed…..truth in politics, eh?
Could easily be $3 trillion in gold in the country, same as there’s an estimated $1000 trillion dissolved in the oceans..
And because the heavy stuff sinks… Could well be incalculable amounts of $ worth of gold in the Earth’s core…
Actually getting it out is, of course, quite another matter….
The whole mining issue exposes environmentalists. They want renewables which requires a lot more mining to be done than the alternatives. However they also want to live a in a clean pastoral country. The solution is to say that mining is needed but in other countries because their country is not suitable for mining. But to make sure, they need the government to ban mining. Just in case.
‘the country’s authoritarian president’
Okay, he is a bit. But as he has pointed out, there appeared to be no other way to deal with the world’s most violent gang raping, torturing and murdering the people of El Salvador.
What works – or as we are perhaps about to find out, what worked – in western European countries like Germany and the UK simply doesn’t work in central and south American hellholes.
It’s impossible to have too much contempt for the Guardian, and its writers and readers; they will continue to see the real world as some abstract other place right up until the moment it smashes down the doors to their homes in Islington, Here’s Johnny style.
One notes the begging bowl at the bottom of the article commences:
This is what we’re up against
A media ecosystem dominated by a handful of billionaire owners.
Scott Trust Ltd is worth over a billion? (Wiki has it at 1.3)
Maybe it’s only billionaires based in tax havens? Oh, wait…
Problem is, most politicians have a binary view of things. Something must be either banned or subsidised. So if they switch from ban to subsidy you will by definition get some economically futile activity happening.
If it’s impossible, why ban it?
We obey the laws of thermodynamics in this house, my girl!