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As Chinese companies have increased their overseas mining operations, allegations of problems caused by these projects have steadily risen.
The Business and Human Rights Resource Centre, an NGO, says such troubles are “not unique to Chinese mining” but last year it published a report listing 102 allegations made against Chinese companies involved in extracting critical minerals, ranging from violations of the rights of local communities to damage to ecosystems and unsafe working conditions.
These allegations dated from 2021 and 2022. The BBC has counted more than 40 further allegations that were made in 2023, and reported by NGOs or in the media.
Well, you answered your own question. We need to give up on “modern society” if our way of living can’t change to ease the exploitation of peoples and the earth, we shouldn’t partake.
If we gave up on things like modern agricultural methods and modern medicine, billions of people could die. You included. Is that really what you want?
I’m ready to start taking steps toward a society that does not exploit people or the earth, if that means our lifespan is impacted, I’ll take that as fallout. Obviously I’d give up more of my own lifestyle as an able bodied person to support others and provide whatever I can for a just society. So yeah, if we can’t do this together, I’d rather not do it at all.
How many children are you willing to allow to starve to death or die by massive infections by abandoning these things?
People are already dying. Our existing system which is built on exploitation causes countless people to be sacrificed to support the way we live right now. How many people are you willing to sacrifice with poisoned waterways and medical conditions caused by unsafe working conditions, as mentioned in the article?
That’s not an answer. There are approximately 2 billion children in the world today. How many are you willing to sacrifice to a slow and agonizing death through starvation and disease? Let’s have a percentage.
Those people are still going to die you realize. This isn’t a binary. It will take decades to eliminate those issues. We’re better off spending that time to figure out how to maintain our current quality of life while also solving those problems.
Edit: Especially if we maintain modern medicine and agriculture. Those aren’t intrinsically safe and non polluting.
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I don’t think that’s a very fair argument. Giving up modern society doesn’t implicitly mean giving up modern medicine or agriculture. I think a fairer interpretation would be that modern society is too obsessed with excessive consumption.
We do need to moderate our consumption, if everyone consumed at the same rate as modern western nations we would all be doomed.
Lot of people are content to say we should give up modern standards of living without realizing just how crucial those are for people living healthily.