Lynas: where common sense left us
Why is a foreign country sending all the raw material over here to process and then take back what it wants, leaving behind what it does not want back on its shores?
So much has been said about the Lynas project. The anti-Lynas voice is slowly drowning under the pro-Lynas marching on.
To give credence to the pro-Lynas propagators and champions, even threats have been hurled at concerned citizens and residents. People have been admonished in no uncertain terms that they may even lose everything else if they boycotted the Lynas project.
So many highly intelligent and so-called specialists are also seemingly working hard in the wake of anti-Lynas objections. The goal is to allay the fears, give assurances that all safety measures will be guaranteed and to allow the progression of the Lynas project that was already hatched a long time ago without public consultation.
But what happened to common sense? Does anyone want to ask that simple question:
Why is a foreign country sending all the raw material over here to process and then take back what it wants, leaving behind what it does not want back on its shores?
Whether you are putting in all the safety measures or whether you will see to the ultimate safe disposal of residual toxins, etc is not the issue. Why do it here? – that is the fundamental question that has not been answered.
Yet we are so busy debating and arguing with all kinds of scientific and attested benchmarks to keep the Lynas project on. We are refusing to pay homoge to basic common sense. And therein lies the rape of a young nation.
If only our leaders put citizens first before profits; if only we put health and well being before economic harvests – we may be poor by Adam Smith’s standards, but healthy on all accounts.
We are just kidding ourselves. What we are looking for is big money in quick time. Sad but true. And in the final analysis, who cares if the pawns die owing to exposure to contaminants ten, twenty or thirty years from now.
By experience we know, the powers that be will in all likelihood cry when the Lynas project goes fowl in the distant future: “We did all we can; but the tragedy is beyond us – it is an act of God. So let us accept the unexpected tragedy in a manner that is consistent with our respective faiths”.
And that is because if have chosen to let common sense fly out of the window. We forget that without common sense there is no Vision 2020 in the first place.
