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Good. Maybe the mining company will actually make a deal with the new government to control and clean up their waste, perhaps by posting a substantial bond, un
by wffurr 6y ago
Good. Maybe the mining company will actually make a deal with the new government to control and clean up their waste, perhaps by posting a substantial bond, unlike most mining companies which just go bankrupt and disappear and leave it for the local government to handle.
- boomboomsubban 6y agoIt's probably cheaper to just buy off a couple non-aligned parliament members and get the deal passed. Or wait til the next election.
- fulafel 6y agoGreenland might not have an efficient market for bribery.
- speed_spread 6y agoBonds are counter-productive, as they are a bet that any cleanup cost will be lower than the bond value. In reality, bonds simply turn to one-time cost for a license to produce unlimited pollution. Worse, they may motivate the operation to use even dirtier / cheaper extraction methods to recoup their upfront cost, knowing than they won't be the ones cleaning up the mess. The exact cycles and targets have to be determined and then constantly monitored from the start by an external authority that retains the ability to shutdown the site at a whim. Then leave it to the operator to create their own safety margins inside of that framework. If this means that the project will no be profitable, you just dodged a bullet.
- matkoniecz 6y agoThat should be solvable by ongoing control and requiring additional prepayment for inevitable cleanup if new estimates are higher. And yes, there is risk of treating mining company of money making machine and wasting money for something else. Still better than letting company to pollute for free.
- dmos62 6y agoYeah, continuous regulation and supervision is unavoidable. Unless you can stop operations at any time, the miner probably doesn't have a financial incentive to do the right thing.