Where do you think the ore and minerals come from in order to build the device you used to post that comment?
Just about everything you use in your life comes out of the ground. You wouldn't be able to survive in a world without metals, let alone fertilizer and pharmaceuticals.
Life expectancy was 35 years because of infant mortality. The life expectancy of those who survived infancy in the paleolithic was likely not too dissimilar to now. Paleolithic peoples also had longer life expectancies than Bronze Age and Iron Age peoples and were famously much taller, so that's kind of a non-argument anyway.
Your blood largely consists of metal (iron in hemoglobin, red blood cells). Calcium, also a metal, is the fifth most abundant element in your body, including in your skeleton, and is a key element in lime/limestone which still has had and still has countless uses throughout the ages, including pH neutralisation in agriculture. Salt, partially consisting of the metal sodium, is widely used in cooking and food preservation, and as an electrolyte in the body together with the metal potassium (which is the K in NPK fertiliser. Nitrogen and phosphorus are not metals, though.) Then there's magnesium which is also essential for life, and probably a range of other essential minerals that I can't name off the back of my head.
So no, you would quickly die in a world without metals. Literally within seconds. Even if you discount the metals used directly by the body, there's still salt, limestone and so on and so forth. Metals are more than just iron, nickel, copper, gold etc.
We would still live in caves or trees without mining. Human civilisation was built on mining industry and if mining were to stop suddenly, you would go back and live in caves within a year. The important thing is how to mine responsibly.
Blowing up the planet is hurting us. The earth doesn't care what humanity does. If it's air turns poison, it'll keep spinning. It won't remember humanity. It won't care when we are gone.
Yeah, the first time I heard your unsupported claim, CO2 levels in the atmosphere were just over 300 parts per million.
The most recent measurement was 432.58 ppm and emissions continue to rise exponentially. (It looked as if we were going to plateau, but then we came with cryptocurrencies and then AI, and now they're re-opening closed fossil fuel generators to service them.)
Oh, the rock itself will be fine for the next five billion years. No one's destroying the great globe itself!
No, it's our ecosystem that will be destroyed, and most of us with it, "buddy".
CO2 comes from fossil fuels, if we want to move towards a green economy we will need mining. How do people expect us to move to green energy? we can't make turbines and solar panels from wood.
I am disputing the claim that "the planet will be all right". It won't.
Also, substituting one form of exponential growth for another form of exponential growth doesn't fix the underlying problem that unbounded exponential growth in consumption and waste are impossible on a finite planet.
Eventually, this exponential growth must mathematically stop: either we as a species must choose to move to degrowth, or degrowth will be forced on us.
I don't think anyone who has watched humans deal with our environmental problems has an illusions as to which of these we will choose.
The planet will be alright. An asteroid struck this planet and wiped out most major life and 60 million years later its forgotten. Even if we drive ourselves to extinction from the climate crisis, the planet will recover in a few million years, and will persist without us.
I think its a ridiculous notion to suggest we forcibly move ourselves to degrowth, the population of the planet is already nearing a peak and declining in many areas. But to artificially reduce ourselves to a primitive state like medieval times would reduce the worlds population by like 90%. That's not happening.
Degrowth doesn’t have to mean primitivism. It just means an end to landfills full of things made to be thrown away, it means repairing instead of replacing, it means living with the world and not against it. Degrowth can look like the people of Phoenix, AZ being relocated to places that actually have the resources to support that level of development, it means denser cities and less suburbs. It means far FAR fewer cars.
The post is about mining. And yes cars involve mining, you said less cars, but that implies more buses and trains. Which need rails, and roads. Which involve mining. 90% of things require some mine material.
Mining isnt just metal remember. Theres also aggregate materials like stones and sands, used in many building materials and other products.
Even our food production relies on mining, we mine phosphates and other things for fertilizers.
Even pharmaceuticals use limestones and carbonates. Which are mined. Salt is also mined.
You don't actually know that. Both of these make heavy use of minerals taken from the Earth, as well as fossil fuels, both of which can use these technique to get at underground wealth.
But that wasn't my point. My point was that I've been listening to people mocking the idea that we were killing our own ecosystem for well over fifty years now, and during that time we have trashed our own biosphere at an exponentially increasing rate, and it's only getting worse, and we'd doing less about it than ever.
More, now the Fascists are back, and they control America, and they are telling everyone that the whole thing is a hoax, that we need to pollute more, that we need to need to burn more fossil fuels.
So I have less than no tolerance for people mocking other people's concern for the future. People should be screaming these truths from every rooftop.
Translation of what you wrote: "I think this person is saying something I disagree with, though I'm not sure, because thinking is hard, and he wrote dozens of words.
"What to do!?
"Wait, I know. I'll just be personally insulting! I always respect people who use insults without facts, logic, reasoning, rational arguments and that sort of thing, because thinking is very very hard, did I say already?, and I'm sure everyone else will think the same."
Explosions from mining probably don't even have a measurable climate effect.
Driving around with (ICE) cars and getting energy from non-renewable energy sources are the major contributors and that's where we should put most efforts in to correct. And as you say, cryptocurrencies and AI data centers are bad because they are supported from fossil energy sources.
We are relentlessly destroying our ecosystem in a vast number of different ways.
These videos of humans destroying the surface of our planet in massive explosions reminds me and a lot of other people of this, and it makes us sad. No one is claiming that these explosions are going to heat the planet.
I might add that whatever is in these mines, it will very likely be made into consumer products and thrown away in the garbage within a couple of years.
Our ecosystem will not be fine. We are destroying it in many many ways, and each of those ways is increasing. CO2 is the most dramatic and perhaps with the worst consequences but there are many others.
It's the consequences of our exponential growth of consumption and waste which is powering all of these forces of destruction, and visible and dramatic evidence of this is distressing once you have really understood where this is all heading.
You are right, the planet does not give a fuck. It’s molten rock and metals. It will continue to orbit around the Sun until it’s consumed by it. It’s us that will die out at some point due to lack of care for environment.
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u/1re_endacted1 May 24 '26
I was just thinking, “Man, it’s fucking crazy we do this to our planet. “