Progress, Redefined

And a deeper appreciation of ALL associated costs.

Image: Hartono Creative Studio

An article by Lorne Fitch

Progress, Redefined

Lorne Fitch, P. Biol.

In 1920, Charles M. Russell, the iconic western artist, gave a speech to civic boosters in Great Falls, Montana. In that speech he said, “In my book a pioneer is a man who turned all the grass upside down, strung bob-wire over the dust that was left, poisoned the water and cut down the trees, killed the Indians who owned the land, and called it progress. If I had my way the land here would be as God made it, and none of you sons of bitches would be here at all.”

It isn’t recorded how the crowd reacted but, from today’s reaction to similar criticism on development, the response might have been remarkably similar. It might have been pointed out by the civic boosters in the crowd in Great Falls that Russell was living in the past, a past that had gone in favour of partisan progress, of improvements to life, and of economic mandates to enrich some.

That dichotomy lives on in the costs of progress, although most today would not be brave enough to enunciate it in the expressive way of Russell. Maybe we should reconsider the conciliatory messages of “balancing” the economy and the environment. These give fuel to endless development, and redefine progress, especially when it occurs at the expense of ecological integrity.

Politicians and corporate leaders define progress as growth (or greed) and there is no endpoint, they can’t have enough. Economists measure progress in terms of the gross domestic product (GDP), the total monetary value of goods and services that accumulate in a year.

So for a coal mine in the Eastern Slopes it would start with the purchase of coal leases, the costs of exploration, setting up offices and staff, lobbying costs, money spent on buying the local community, undertaking impact assessments, hiring legal advice, and advertising costs promoting the merits of the mine.

Other expenditures related to the mine would include the time and travel costs of people organizing in reaction to the project, legal costs incurred by people averse to the project, hiring experts to indicate the shortcomings, research efforts to define the issues, costs to the provincial regulator to review the project, hearings to listen to concerns, costs of evaluations of project merits and concerns, costs of demonstrations against the initiative, provincial surveys of Albertan’s attitudes about mining, costs of court proceedings and decisions, and lost productivity due to time spent on registering concerns.

If the coal mine were to proceed there would be the money received from coal sales, royalties to government (if it wasn’t freehold coal), taxes paid, the salaries paid to staff, local buying of goods and services, purchase or rental of equipment, repair and replacement costs, mine infrastructure construction and maintenance, the costs of dealing with multiple mine failures, fines for environmental infractions, and inevitably the costs of reclamation.

There would be the costs to downstream communities to ramp up water treatment costs, to deal with additional water quality issues from mining. Downstream water users, like agricultural producers and food processors might suffer economic losses because of water quality and quantity issues and have to invest in other livelihoods.

There would be additional human health issues requiring more expenditure. There might be the costs of repairing flood damage to downstream infrastructure because of changes to hydrologic response from mining, or settling pond failures.

Some of these costs would be part of the gifts that keep on giving, even after mine closure.

Other economic initiatives would have relocation and start-up costs to move to more suitable circumstances to avoid mine-related conflicts. Some homeowners, affected by noise, pollution, or other issues might move to other localities.

Yes, for all these reasons and more, a coal mine might increase the GDP, maybe in the short-term. But if it’s just the monetary value of goods and services provided, or created by a coal mine, does this define progress or are we missing something?

Maybe our economic metrics are skewed. Some of the metrics are negative as things play out over time, especially the legacy costs of coal mining.

The fish may be gone from the watershed, or seriously affected by toxins in the water. That would be a signal that watershed integrity is compromised. Expenditures for recreational angling would plummet as would other associated travel and tourism opportunities. It’s doubtful a coal mine would form a tourism draw. A hole where a mountain once stood would not provide the sort of attractive, aesthetic feature to convince new businesses and home buyers to settle.

People who bought into the economic hype of coal mining would be left high and dry with a mine bust, especially as the world turns away from coal. There would be lost opportunity costs for several business sectors unable to cope with mine-related issues. There would be lost time for affected communities to develop a set of sustainable, long term economies that don’t destroy basic attributes and amenities.

If we judge our economic well being on only the value of material things and services we should then include the costs of air and water pollution, increased GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions that exacerbate climate change, destruction of a mountain and its watershed, remediating orphan mines and their water quality issues, loss of fish and wildlife, the added burden on human health, and the inability to create community stability. These entail significant costs, not benefits.

Our current economic metrics of progress do not measure our intelligence in making informed decisions in favour of sustainable outcomes for all Albertans. As Robert Kennedy said in speech at Kansas State University in 1968 about the GDP as a measure of wealth, “It measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.”

Charles Russell had a point. Even though we can’t cling to the past, we don’t need to destroy our future with today’s short-term, ill-prepared, and boom and bust schemes that leave behind a costly legacy for tomorrow. That’s not prudent economics even with our current, ephemeral measures of progress.

Lorne Fitch is a Professional Biologist, a retired Fish and Wildlife Biologist and a past Adjunct Professor with the University of Calgary. He is the author of Streams of Consequence: Dispatches From the Conservation World and Travels Up the Creek: A Biologist’s Search for a Paddle.