(Originally posted on my blog, John Kaufman.)
"Great jobs potential" is what the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel had to say last Sunday about a proposed iron ore strip mine in northern Wisconsin. The Editorial Board did add that
The mine should not be developed if its benefits are outweighed by the damage it might do to the environment.
If? Might? The JS editors are willing to rely on state officials (now overseen by interests for which damage to the environment is proof that the state is open for business) to "ensure that the mine's environmental impact is reasonable." Reasonable? To what extent is obliterating a landscape and polluting and/or destroying streams a rational activity?
If the Journal Sentinel had ever bothered to explore, in all the years that the Milwaukee area has been the global epicenter of strip mine machinery manufacturing, what strip mining machines are actually doing to the environment, the Editorial Board might not now be making such unreasonable, nay, irresponsible statements.
If you'd like to learn just how strip mining "benefits" the land and people of Appalachia, I'd recommend this excellent and extensive bit of journalism emanating from the Charleston Gazette in West Virginia.