LeCain’s basic argument about the three technofixes were that they are never a guarantee on if they’ll actually work to clean up contaminated sites. The transformational and relocational technofixes were shown to work in the Ducktown region of Georgia where the byproduct was changed to release acid instead of toxic smoke. In this case the acid was made into fertilizer and was a minor victory for technofixes, but it never actually healed the region that had been damaged by the industrial copper smelting. Here at home in Montana an example of a delaying technofix can be seen with the Anaconda Smelter and the arsenic poisoning. Here the Smelter was forced to deal with the arsenic problem, and they choose to capture and store as much as possible. Eventually the Smelter shut down, and all the captured poison still resides there today. Basically, LeCain urges caution when approaching technofixes, since in the two case studies provided there were serious issues created or just never addressed.
When is comes to copper mining and the mining of other precious ores I take an older stance. Copper is one of the most useful metals around; it can be used to make bronze weapons, bronze armor, bronze jewelry, and I guess it can also be used for like electricity or something like that. We really need copper for all sorts of great things, but perhaps we could go about mining it in a better way. The way we’ve mined in the past seems to leave quite the mess; however there isn’t really another way to do it. Perhaps there really is no solution to the problem of environmental destruction, but in the end there is only a finite amount of copper left to be mined. Maybe civilization can’t sustain itself, and we simply have to abandon it.