El medio ambiente en la minería

199 NICKCOPPlN The Polluter Pays is in fact onIy half a principIe. The other half is He Who Pays Has To Pass The Costs To The Customers. This is the same as for any production or raw material cost required to put a product on the market. In a .free market, there is a basic profitability lhat any company has to have in order to survive, and market forces should ensure that this profit is not excessive. Payíng for pollution cannot therefore come out of profit, except in a veryfew circumstances. Who are the customers? We are: society as a whole. Society creates the demand for a product, it enjoys the benefits that the products of the mining industry bring, it therefore has to bear the costs of their production, including the environmental costs. So in reality the polluter doesn't pay, society pays (perhaps society can be said to be the polluter, in effeet). Society has to deeide howit pays: - To accept a reduction in environmental quality (this is easy ir it is someone elses environmental quality that is reduced). To paya higher price for the product, in other words the true price for the product, including the environmental price. - To pay higher taxes so the government can step in and solve the problems afterwards. Whichever method of payment is adopted, the costs wiIl have to be paid sometime. If it is not now, then the costs in the future wiIl be higher because we are only borrowing the capital from our environmental account. There is another principIe that applies: Tbere Is No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. This principie applies to the environment as much as lo any other waJk of life. This ÍSSue raises an interestingquestion about international trade, which 1 shall illustrate with an example from the United Kingdom. A large copper orebody was discovered at a place caUed Coed-y-Brenin in. North Wales. In the 1970's a mining company explored this deposil and made an application to exploit it by open-pit mining. This orebody happens lo be in one of our Nalional Parks. After a long and untidy public debate, a typical adversarial contest betwecn themining company and the environmental inter– ests, inwhich both sides were accused of playíng dirty, lhe mine did not receive a permit to proceed. It was considered lhat the environmental costs were too high. In effeet what lhe British public did was lo import the resource from another country, rather lhan accept the environmental costs themseIves, though il has lo be said lhat the environmenlal costs would have becn very high. 11 is not certain what the deeision would have becn if the option to import the copper at a low cosl from elsewhere had nol becn available. Would the British people