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Yes

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If we have the technology to mine in the Antarctic then that's exactly where we should be heading. Too often we uproot entire forests, depopulate vast expanses of wildlife and leave nothing behind but a gaping hole and a huge mound of toxic materials. People are displaced and wars are fought just to gain access to iron, oil, gold and every other valuable commodity on the planet.

The Antarctic is just one of several places that are inhospitable to most life. We should be taking advantage of the opportunity / ability to develop mining, drilling and other resource harvesting projects in areas where the inherent destruction of large scale resource harvesting will not have the same effect.

We should be exploring and exploiting the resources of those areas of the world where the impact of our presence would be minimal. It's not a situation of keeping the garbage (noise, pollution, industrial byproducts etc.) out of our own back yard and putting it elsewhere. It's a situation of realizing that human society depends on these resources to maintain itself. Without taking advantage of natural resources, life as we currently know it, ends.

Until we can find better, cleaner, ways to support our society, we need to keep the damage to a minimum. If that means damaging a mostly barren ecosystem (like glacial Antarctica) to protect viable ecosystems (like the Amazon rainforest) then I am all for it.

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