> Poisoning a few watersheds in Asia

There are plenty of ways to rationalize anything into making it seem fine or even great, at least by comparison. Just because it's framed in a binary manner where one option is clearly the worst doesn't make the other option good. It's still a fallacy. Your cynicism might block you from realizing that mining for coal instead of cutting down trees doesn't make it "a net positive" for the environment, just a lower net negative.

So I'm glad that we can agree on one thing though. Mining never had any kind of net positive impact on the environment.