Comment by alephnerd | Hacker News Reader

Comment by alephnerd | Hacker News Reader

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> why is it so assumed that only China can produce rare earths

You want carcinogens in you water supply, and a whole NYT expose about it? That's why. Mining and processing is VERY VERY VERY dirty.

Countries like China, Vietnam, Indonesia, and India are choosing the accept the externalities and/or make deals with shady partners if needed.

Add to that spamoflauge campaigns lead by nation state competitors trying to stoke opposition to these projects [0], and it becomes hard.

[0] - https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/dra...

Edit: can't reply, so replying here.

> mines many elements domestically, so why the sudden environmental concern specifically with rare earths

Optics mostly, along with a healthy dose of social media disinfo [0]. Processing is also a pain in the butt and causes severe externalities.

> while the US relied on market forces to handle supply chains.

Pretty much, but private sector firms are also worried/hemmed by the implications of litigation.

The recognition that the status quo is unstable arose after China weaponized exports to Japan during the Senkaku Diaoyu crisis (it was one of the first things I worked on in my short stint in policy), but "industrial policy" was a dark word you could never utter on the hill until the last 3-4 years.

Also, 13-15 years ago, China wasn't really viewed as a threat the same way it is today. Russia was viewed as the primary peer state competitor to the US back then. I yelled hoarse warning the people I reported to that we needed to deep dive into Chinese institutions back then, but no one listened.

The US mines many elements domestically, so why the sudden environmental concern specifically with rare earths?

Is there evidence that China’s rare earth mining creates more environmental damage than US coal, gold, or other domestic mining operations?

The real issue seems to be strategic: China made rare earth supply security a policy priority, while the US relied on market forces to handle supply chains.

I like nature and care about the environment. I care about my fellow man, I want them to be able to work a safe job with good pay and have the ability to provide for their family.

With that being the case, how can I in good conscious take a position that would lead to mining and manufacturing being done in any country that is not enforcing environmental and safety regulations? In any country that is not paying a living wage?

So yes, I want mining and processing done here. I want the manufacturing jobs here. We want clean air and clean water, we have to pay for it.

This isn't manufacturing (though even that is very dirty depending on the industry). This is mining and processing. There is NO clean way to scar the earth and then leverage chemicals to separate and extract the materials needed.

As such, there will be environmental externalities no matter what, and wishing for "clean mining and processing" is the same as giving "thoughts and prayers" - essentially meaningless.

In my opinion, we need to accept that cost.

Curious why this is downvoted, as this matches my understanding. We have strong (ish) environmental and worker protections in the US that other countries don't have.

These are good things, but they make it a lot more expensive to do this stuff domestically.

Mining and processing is very dirty.

Probably because it brings into focus the unconformable truth of what we have been doing.

In a similar vain, I was talking with a friend about plastic straws and the movement at the time to ban them. My friend was all on board and told me about the stainless steel ones they just bought from Amazon Prime. It's very convenient, delivers straight to your house and if you don't like it you just send it back.

So here we are worried about the straw but are having things shipped with 2 day delivery to the door. We live in a reasonable large city, drive to and from work past stores that are selling the same items. 2019 numbers have Amazon's van fleet at 30,000. Assuming 67 tons of GHG per vehicle(https://www.transportationenergy.org/resources/the-commute/l...) gets you 2 million tons.

I don't worry about the straws, I worry about the thinking that gets us to focus on the straws instead of the larger picture.

The vans are probably a wash, carbon-wise, because they are taking cars off the road.

I hardly ever drive anywhere these days. Pretty much everything we buy in the household comes through Amazon or another online seller, and gets delivered by vehicles that would have been on the road anyway, delivering other things to other people. The "larger picture" may be larger than you think it is.

Maybe, but we have how many competing delivery networks? If they all shared the same last mile delivery vans/routes, wouldn't that take many trucks off the road?

I'm not saying it's doable. I'm sure that in Soviet USA there'd only be one delivery service, but it'd be about as fast and reliable as UDP over avian carrier :)

Thank you for understanding!

Before Amazon Prime we had 2 major deliver services: UPS and FedEx as well as USPS.

Now we have 3.

I didn't include in my previous comment but most of the people using Prime that I know still drive everyday, many drop their kids off at school. Going past stores that sell the same sorts of things they are buying on Prime.

For them the main driver is convenience of not having to stop and the ability to tell Alexa to put it on a list and reorder periodically.

This seems to be the case for most of the customers, look at the rise of Instacart. Door Dash followed suite by expanded from just hot meal delivery to Retail and Grocery. Traditional grocery stores don't want to leave the margins on the table so they are launching their own efforts.

I leave some food for thought:) https://web.archive.org/web/20200612211824/https://www.thegu...

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