Ben here made my point right after I pointed it out. He brings up Kennicott's Bingham Copper mine but seems ignorant that pound for pound of copper it's the cle

Ben here made my point right after I pointed it out. He brings up Kennicott's Bingham Copper mine but seems ignorant that pound for pound of copper it's the cleanest copper produced on the planet. He also seems to not address the reality that our geography would trap a lot of pollution regardless of where it was originally produced, simply by virtue of the valley's geography. I'm not against cleaning things up as much as possible. But do you really think shutting down the cleanest copper operation on the planet is a net gain for the environmental movement? Are we really okay with bad air as long as we don't directly produce it? How many of us have smart phones and computers (we are discussing this on HN are we not?)? How guilty do we feel about the pollution produced in 3rd world countries where much of the Rare Earth Elements used in them are mined? Please people, reconsider the degree of outrage simply because you can see the dirty air. Illusory and placebo environmentalism is not the means to a better world. We need to see things in a planetary perspective if we want to really address planetary problems, and being enraged about SLC's air quality in the middle of an inversion is like getting worked up about polluted water after watching Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. Sure the water is atrocious and it's a crying shame, but the water is likely no less polluted in any other metropolitan area hit by a hurricane, it's just the Geography is less advantageous to New Orleans.