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As an Australian, you’re forgetting one really key part of the puzzle. Australia is a FUCKING ENORMOUS lump of mineral rich dust. The country is literally tint

As an Australian, you’re forgetting one really key part of the puzzle. Australia is a FUCKING ENORMOUS lump of mineral rich dust. The country is literally tinted red when viewed from space because of all the iron in our dry, desolate, empty-ass country. There is one, and I do mean ONE, advantage to being a developed western country that is also fucking empty and inhospitable. All the NIMBY’s are atleast 1000km away from your mine… You could put hundreds of open cut mines all over WA, SA, NT, and nobody would even notice because there’s fuckin-nuthin out there.

roenxi 4y ago
We could, but that is a lot less economic. Open pit mines are for bulk commodities and if you put them in the middle of nowhere then the transport costs get extreme. It makes more sense to put them distant but proximate to an existing train line or city. Somewhere like the Pilbara is a bit of an exception because there are 300m high blocks of iron, so sure, we can afford to build a few new tracks. And Europe/the US/Africa/Asia aren't exactly small places. All the continents are big and an open cut mine is actually pretty small compared to the amount of land we put aside for, say, farming. The Earth isn't short of spare earth.
- chris_wot 4y ago
  Australia has an incredibly dense population basis around the seaboard. There is virtually no one in the centre. I don’t know of any other continent like this. We are freaking Arrakis.
  - EdwardDiego 4y ago
    Does that make Scotty from Marketing a Harkonnen? Tony Abbott was a product of the Tleilaxu, that I'm sure of.
bjowen 4y ago
Just. No. Leaving aside the massive pastoral leases, that is the ancestral land of the oldest continuing cultures on the planet. Mabo vs Qld was handed down in 1992 and the idea that “nobody is out there” was formally and legally abolished then, and should be condemned to Australia’s regrettable, racist past.

roenxi 4y ago

We could, but that is a lot less economic. Open pit mines are for bulk commodities and if you put them in the middle of nowhere then the transport costs get extreme. It makes more sense to put them distant but proximate to an existing train line or city. Somewhere like the Pilbara is a bit of an exception because there are 300m high blocks of iron, so sure, we can afford to build a few new tracks. And Europe/the US/Africa/Asia aren't exactly small places. All the continents are big and an open cut mine is actually pretty small compared to the amount of land we put aside for, say, farming. The Earth isn't short of spare earth.

chris_wot 4y ago
Australia has an incredibly dense population basis around the seaboard. There is virtually no one in the centre. I don’t know of any other continent like this. We are freaking Arrakis.
- EdwardDiego 4y ago
  Does that make Scotty from Marketing a Harkonnen? Tony Abbott was a product of the Tleilaxu, that I'm sure of.

bjowen 4y ago

Just. No. Leaving aside the massive pastoral leases, that is the ancestral land of the oldest continuing cultures on the planet. Mabo vs Qld was handed down in 1992 and the idea that “nobody is out there” was formally and legally abolished then, and should be condemned to Australia’s regrettable, racist past.