I think most of this is irrelevant despite being interesting.

OP used the common-usage definition of profit (made more money than spent) and you sought to rebut that on the basis of a different definition that seems to be of your own creation. You clearly know that OP meant profit in the usual sense based on your comments. That seems like deliberate misinterpretation to me; you are responding to an argument that you know OP wasn’t making (that this event was a net environmental / societal positive).