They have recently bailed out of New Zealand, leaving hundreds of millions of dollars of waste cleanup at various sites.
They had stored waste that is dangerous if it gets wet in a location that bordered a river that floods and was populated.
New waste discoveries are made periodically - they are a horrible company.
They haven't left NZ. Every couple of years they go "we're super serious guys, this time we're REALLY going to leave for realz", then Meridian or the government offers them some sweetener to stick around with a new termination date (in this case, "ok well we will hang around but only until 2024 when we really will leave, mark my words").
Rio Tinto (and the complicit governments of Australia and New Zealand) should give the land back to the indigenous people it was stolen from. An apology is clearly not enough. They have proven to be poor stewards of their holdings.
Do you really think the country doesn’t have hundreds of millions of dollars of better jobs to create if “clean up toxic waste” wasn’t sucking up that money?
It’s not “job creation” if the “creator” didn’t bring the money to pay the workers from capital that would have been otherwise inaccessible as a wage source in that country. Government=Taxpayer money is not that.
This is an incredibly naive and ill-informed view of the value Tiwai brings to parts of NZ, especially Southland. As for the Dross, they had sold that to a company which went bankrupt before it could turn it into fertiliser.
They financed the construction of the dam and helped make NZ more relevant when it was even more of an insignificant island that it is now, they've provided stable, high paying jobs for a whole region for decades (when meatworks were closing right and center), these stable jobs have allowed families to send their children to university and have a decent life. Pollution wise they havent done so poorly, there is maybe some nastyish stuff buried on site, but other than that smelting bauxite is rather clean.
They produce the most 'green' aluminiy in the world, would you rather it be made with coal fired electricity?
As for providing 1000jobs, yeah, maybe directly, but those people spend money in town, not to mention the contracts Tiwai would bave with other companies in town.
Only thing that comes to mind is South Park's "We're sooorrry" clip. This sentence in the Dec 2020 article says it all, doesn't it?
"They were seen as one of Australia's most significant archaeological research sites, but they also had more than eight million tonnes of high-grade iron ore, with an estimated value of £75m (A$132m; $96m)."
Rio Tinto's official page on this is also worth a read.
Fascinating catch on their usage of active vs. passive language.
The Hero, Villain, Victim triangle plays out beautifully there.
In the Active, you have the company positioning itself as the Hero helping the Victim.
In the Passive, you find them pointing to some unidentified character from the company’s past (8 years ago) who stands as the Villain responsible for this.
They’ve positioned it as if the company is merely the Hero currently trying to help the Victims.
My favorite part about bloodsucking corporations like this and Verizon/AT&T is that the actual stock value of these corporations has barely moved in the last two decades. I thought this kind of unfettered profiteering and capitalism would be good for long term value?
All this suffering and destruction to meekly underperform the stock market. Why do these executives have jobs?
Ah, but the bloodsucking and profiteering is predictable, so it was already priced in. If they stopped and acted like responsible global citizens instead, now that would be a surprise, and their stock price would drop precipitously.
>My favorite part about bloodsucking corporations like this and Verizon/AT&T is that the actual stock value of these corporations has barely moved in the last two decades
Maybe because they're paying out profits in dividends?
I actually didn't know this. Does Rio Tinto also fall into this category of 'objectively terrible for the human race, but pays wonderful dividends to the stakeholders'?
The point is that the stock value remains in the same place because they distribute part of their earnings to shareholders. On the day of a dividend, the stock gets discounted by the amount of the dividend. So if you pay out a large dividend and the share price is static over the long term, that’s actually quite good for investors.
(In other words, your earlier comment about bloodsucking profiteers misses the mark a little bit.)
No, this is not any paritcular individuals fault but the system itself since the incentives and legal system are set up this way. If one wasn't like a sociopath then they either wouldn't be hired or would be fired for not doing their job. Due to the environment that the company ooerates in (which we have created), this is exactly what it'd be predicted to do regardless of the individuals involved.
Exactly my thoughts, but then again, commodity gatherers have to do everything and anything - including blowing up archeological sites - to make living money these days due to extremely low commodity prices. Not that I sympathize with those guys, but rather that I can smell the desperation on them.
That I think has more to do with the downing of F117 a month prior. I'm thinking the Chinese bought some secret parts, and the Americans made a last ditch attempt to prevent the Chinese from obtaining some tech.
The F-117 was shot down in Yugoslavia. China acquired quite a few parts from it, ran into difficulties getting them out of the country, and stored them temporarily at the embassy in Belgrade as their base of operations. Chinese papers have published that part. The US denies the bombing was on purpose, but admitted in a Congressional hearing that it was the only bombing in the campaign directed by the CIA. The "wrong map" reasoning seems a little thin at that point.
With the removal of monuments and vacations to historic sites, I think I’m settling on this idea.
Things made by humans are temporary. If not miners, then flood, earthquake, or other human pursuit would eventually wipe the slate clean.
From a more local perspective, imagine moving away from an area for whatever reason and then a thousand years later someone finds your dirty dishes and Twisted Sister poster and wants to preserve it for posterity.
Assuming that was the only visual trace of Twisted Sister remaining it'd be pretty neat. Also I'm sure that anthropologists would have a field day inspecting the chemical makeup of those hotpocket crumbs and announce that they're "Just as edible today as they were all those thousands of years ago!"
Every time this brought up the person doing so doesn't seem to realize that some companies have lower margins than others (eg. walmart vs microsoft), so you end up those companies more.
I understand margin quite well. The whole point of the penalty is to make it painful enough they don't do it again. You can hide profit, you can't hide revenue.
You can't hide revenue, but you can hide assets. You might get your $100M judgement, but it's pointless when you can't collect it because the company you fined is a pass-through entity with no assets.
I’ve thought about a system where a company has to purchase liability insurance when they dump assets.
So if a plant has a chemical leak, the company can’t sell every other plant, pay a huge dividend, and then declare bankruptcy to avoid paying damages. The plant would have to be insured for up to the total dividend payout. The insurance company would charge a huge fee based on what they think the plant will end up costing after a court battle, etc.
What would happen if someone blew up the mining company office due to a "paperwork oversight"?
You would probably kill a few janitors, and the executives would come out unscathed, again.
If you're going to go as far as engaging in violence, it's much better to go after the executives directly, as they're the ones who deserve it, not the guys making minimum wage to clean out the trash cans.
With the extreme levels of government impotence and apathy towards prosecuting corporations and their leaders for crimes against humanity, I worry vigilante assassinations are going to become increasingly common over the next decade as justice is not otherwise being served.
I wish destroying aboriginal heritage got its due media coverage and widespread resistance. The topic reminds me of a satire news article about Canada, poking fun at oil pipelines passing through and destroying first nations religiously important lands.
This is a crime against humanity - our culture and history. It's profoundly disturbing that Rio Tinto gets to do this repeatedly with no consequences. To all Australians - what the hell??
Oak flat in Arizona seems sacred to the longtime local inhabitants, rio tinto’s “oops were sorry we blew up your sacred site” about Australia doesn’t seem sincere given they have spent years trying to implode oak flat and are still at it.
But hey Arizonans will get a handful of jobs for a couple decades while the mineral wealth that belongs to Americans is funneled to a select few.
Mining booms don’t tend to have longevity, leaving behind a broken town and damaged environment.
And With an international mining company, The wealth isn’t staying local or even likely in America.
And as tax payers, the public is getting shafted too. If the lease actually had American tax payers seeing a fair share in return for their land being damaged and the wealth used up, and there was also an amenable compromise with the native Americans for whom that site is sacred, then yeah it could be okay even if it would be temporary jobs.
“But the plans were on display…”
“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”
“That’s the display department.”
“With a flashlight.”
“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”
“So had the stairs.”
“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
There's almost zero information is this article, except that the "Australian Minister for Indigenous Affairs Ken Wyatt, who is Aboriginal... added that it appeared to be a "genuine mistake"".
Did Rio Tinto just not know the caves were there? Who was supposed to be responsible for them knowing -- was it their responsibility or that of the government? Did they know caves existed but not know they had historical significance? Were they following standard safety protocols and had no intention of damaging the cave, but there were unseen side effects of earth shifting or something?
Articles like this infuriate me because they invite us to assign knee-jerk blame, but then don't actually give any of the information needed to make that assessment.
And if this happened a year ago, surely there's a more recent more informative article that could have been submitted instead? I'm not sure what the point of submitting this particular article is -- there aren't any actionable details here on what perhaps needs to change in going forwards to prevent this type of thing from happening again.
Sure, but at least they put a picture of a native on their careers page [0].
"Our five values – safety, teamwork, respect, integrity and excellence – define how we treat each other and how we work together. We are committed to an inclusive environment where people feel comfortable to be themselves. And we want our people to feel that all voices are heard, all cultures respected and that a variety of perspectives are not only welcome – they are essential to our success."
It's interesting that those values apply only within the company, and does not include anything about respecting natural or historical resources, or respecting local law. So, props for honesty?
To be fair, this is a standard corporate bullshit. Heck, our bank has almost exactly same values, also 5 in total, and the fact they showed up after series of fines from regulators re fuckups here and there, everywhere, just underlines they are created by marketing team, just in this case more inward focused one.
Nobody sane obviously buys that bullcrap, not the people who come up with it, not the management, shareholders, stock holders, employees, nobody. So we can entirely ignore this, its not meant literally, or in any other serious way.
Isn't that giving in? It's smart - it anticipates the lie, and so prepares you for the inevitable betrayal. But wouldn't it be better if we at least pretended that people mean what they say, rather than preemptively give them a pass on their hypocrisy? The trouble with world-weary cynicism is that undermines basic human values like integrity. It sets the bar lower the more powerful an entity is. And that's the reverse of how the world should be. The bar should be higher the more powerful the entity. The degree to which we hold an entity accountable should be proportional to its power.
So, my friend, I understand where you're coming from, but I would encourage you to set aside your cynicism. You'll notice that I used the word "should" in the previous paragraph. I think you're right about how it is but let's not give up on how things should be.
I'm assuming you can't hold someone accountable to a statement they didn't mean. And yet, you make me rethink that. Perhaps you can, and perhaps that's closer to how it should be.
And it also helps me refine my earlier point. Too often I hear cynics (who are, after all, just disappointed idealists) effectively argue that we should give up, the game is rigged, and they'll get away with it no matter what we do. As emotionally safe as this position is, it's also self-fulfilling, and ultimately gives the powerful ever less accountability.
That said, I think "meaning what you say" should be an element of accountability, too, but you're right in that it's not strictly necessary.
> I'm assuming you can't hold someone accountable to a statement they didn't mean. And yet, you make me rethink that. Perhaps you can, and perhaps that's closer to how it should be.
I would say doing so is fundamental to consequentialist [1] and especially utilitarian [2] ethics. I'm not saying those are the best, but they are somewhat common.
It's hard to measure what someone means, which is why I like the idea of removing it!
As for the more philosophical stuff, I think I'm talking about (retributive) justice, and even more specifically, about how public attitudes about justice have a self-fulfilling effect on justice. My hypothesis is that cynical views on justice tend to be self-reinforcing, and idealistic views of justice are also self-reinforcing.
The primary utility of the cynical view seems to be personal/emotional, but comes at the expense of taking pressure off of the world to be better. I suppose my goal here is to encourage disappointed idealists to take up the idealistic mantel, and learn to get disappointed in people again. It's painful to care, but the pain is worth it to produce a better world.
If it were legal to sell such artifacts, museums and collectors around the world could bid up the prices, making them much more profitable than the iron ore Rio Tinto could otherwise extract, strongly motivating them toward recovery.
The natives of that land would probably be deprived of their exclusive access, and private buyers could hide their own collections from the world. But most public buyers and many private ones would be very motivated to share these precious items with the world, scientifically and culturally. The publicity increases their resale value if nothing else.
How many ancient artifacts are hidden away because they are illegal to own? I might or might not have owned such an arrowhead once. If I did and still did that could make it something I had to hide. The pool of artifacts available to archaeologists and museums may well be smaller due to such perverse incentives.
I know people who make home displays of arrowheads and potshards they've found. But others, not wanting to openly break federal law, keep them hidden in drawers. The law effectively hides away evidence of the ancient people that came before us. If they removed the threat we could openly celebrate them instead.
The artifacts that were destroyed were priceless. If they had prices, they probably would be high, and so would be carefully preserved instead.
As a former archaeologist, we really don't care about random contextless artifacts. Legal or not, the stuff in your house would almost certainly not be useful for academic work. Please don't use us as an argument against antiquities laws, especially as most archaeologists are in favor of making them even stronger.
> most archaeologists are in favor of making them even stronger.
Most archaelogists are public employees or employed by institutions dependent on public funds. This makes them more inclined to state intervention than the average citizen. Their paychecks literally depend on it.
> As a former archaeologist, we really don't care about random contextless artifacts.
Collectors do still value random artifacts, but a collection is much more valuable in context. A company that found such a site and could exploit it would be wise to hire archaeologists to improve the value of their property. You can sell the Crown Jewels for more than you can sell the individual jewels.
In most western countries (especially the US and UK where I have experience), there is a thriving private archaeology industry. Perhaps that's not true in your country, but it's a pretty unfair dismissal regardless.
I wrote "Most archaelogists", not all. Among the professionals, is that untrue or less than fair? If archaeology is predominantly a private industry I do need to update my priors.
Yes, the largest sector by far is private. There aren't many publicly funded jobs (annually it's measured in low 3 digits) and the competition for them is fierce. Either way, the ethics are similar.
I don't intend to be dismissive in saying this, but the arguments that you're making are wildly off-base about the underlying subject. Moreover, archaeology for the sole purpose of increasing commercial value violates strong ethical norms.
Sadly much more boring. It's mostly the result of heritage laws that require archaeological experts to be involved in construction/development projects under certain conditions. We're usually involved as private contractors either in looking for things before/during construction or rescuing found sites.
> If it were legal to sell such artifacts, museums and collectors around the world could bid up the prices, making them much more profitable than the iron ore Rio Tinto could otherwise extract, strongly motivating them toward recovery.
Unless they weren't. Then they'd be blown up anyway, except we'd perceive a moral right for them to do so, and it would be harder to fight back against the practice.
i live in washington and hike a lot, i have found arrowheads and other artifacts, as have many of my hiking buddies. every time you call the tribe and offer to give them their artifacts, they tell you keep them.
Exactly, the original title was misleading PR speak [1] focused on Rio Tinto's bullshit apology instead of the magnitude of the site that they destroyed.
Odd to see such dogmatic reverence for pg's rule to the extent that you actively remove the key information which drives interest in a post initially.
How does condemning titles to bland, irrelevant, uninteresting "original" statements fit with on-topic posts meant to be "anything that good hackers would find interesting"?
If you really want to understand HN's approach to titles, I can explain more, but I'd like to be sure first that you aren't just trying to pick a fight about it, since that's boring and never works.
One short, partial answer is that in practice, the kind of thing people do when they're trying to make titles less "bland, irrelevant, uninteresting" is actually to make them more provocative and baity, which is not at all the same thing as what the HN guidelines mean by "interesting". Provocation and curiosity not only aren't the same, they may even be disjoint states.
This should be prosecuted as crimes against humanity, along with lengthy jail times for execs involved in the issue. They won't be, for obvious reasons.
Can we stop throwing around cries for imprisonment for things which are (1) not even obviously a legislated crime and (2) not intentional? This has become a super common meme recently.
There are perfectly viable ways to financially disincentivize companies (or individuals!) from bad acts like this without building a society where the default punishment for anything zeitgeist-bad is imprisonment?
Prison is a last resort when you _can't_ get people to follow laws using other means (ie, a serial rapist is not going to be deterred by financial penalties). But if a CEO or corporation is doing something clearly for profit, there is an obvious and easy way to prevent it without taking someone's life away. It's barbaric and unnecessary.
I'm American! Stop doing it! It's not even the traditional law-and-order conservatives calling for this; it's leftists who just want to redirect the industrial prison system at a new target!
Which is why the most appropriate solution for those who hold themselves above the system due to their wealth and influence is to stick them directly in the worst parts of it and force them to experience it for years.
I don't believe that subjecting someone to the same punitive system they have an outsized influence over is a bad thing. I believe it's necessary, so that when they get out, that they work to change it lest they return one day. The funny thing about contrition is that you usually need to be forced into it.
Prison is the only thing that deters millionaires and billionaires from purposefully destroying priceless treasures to humanity to get at the commonplace resources that lay underneath.
Financial disincentives have NEVER worked because our system isn't designed to punish these things, by design.
If the reason they do these things is for money (which I think is fair to assume) then money is clearly an effective incentive. The fines just have to make it unprofitable.
2. Even if it was, do you understand what a deduction is? You still lose money; you'd be changing the base on your federal income payments, but since your income tax is at most 40% or so, you're still paying at minimum 60% of the penalty (even if it was deductible, which it is not).
Apparently the queen is Rio Tinto's largest non-corporate shareholder.
Cooincidentally she's used her powers to make herself immune from being blamed or having to worry about causing climate change. [1] Says it all really...
Then I would be validated in my belief that your reading comprehension is poor? Or do you truly believe that the caves were formed a mere 46K years ago?
You said "What if I told you that those caves would be the same age regardless of who inhabited them over the years". One logical implication is that you think the age does not refer to the time at which the cave was inhabited, but to something else. It is reasonable to assume the only other thing you could be referring to is the age of the caves themselves, geologically. You should explain your thoughts more explicitly, rather than relying on implications delivered via sarcasm.
> Australian Minister for Indigenous Affairs Ken Wyatt, who is Aboriginal, said it was "incomprehensible" that the blast had gone ahead, but added that it appeared to be a "genuine mistake". State laws had failed in this instance, he said.
Indeed, and even if someone wasn't interested in the historical value of what was lost, there's still the matter of the process failure that allowed it to happen (or covered up that it was happening, depending on your level of cynicism).
I see - "wallowing" implies different parties and motives than the more normal concept of getting outrage-driven clicks. However, this doesn't seem to have anything to do with outrage media. It's a pretty reasonable thing to report on, and it's reported on pretty reasonably. It's both important and interesting, so the fact that it is also outrageous seems irrelevant to the implication that it shouldn't be observed or commented on. You might make an argument that nothing old should be posted, and I would disagree, but that too seems like an argument unrelated to whether or not something is outrageous merely for the sake of getting clicks.
They had stored waste that is dangerous if it gets wet in a location that bordered a river that floods and was populated. New waste discoveries are made periodically - they are a horrible company.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/443538/rio-tinto-takes-o...