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China Wrestles with the Toxic Aftermath of Rare Earth Mining

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Re: China Wrestles with the Toxic Aftermath of Rare Earth Mining

#11

Post by throwaway2048 »

ThomPete wrote: post #8
mrspuratic wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capitalism 101, get rich by plundering the earth (and leave someone else to clean up the mess). Mining is a truly nasty business, and not just environmentally. No small problem is that of assigning value to a clean environment, or to sustainable practises. ETS anyone?

You are most likely using products based on mining to write that comment. Doesn't that make you complicit if we are to follow your hard stance here?

Did you know by just being alive you are destroying the earth? Clearly anyone that dosen't immediately kill themselves has no grounds for criticizing anything.

Re: China Wrestles with the Toxic Aftermath of Rare Earth Mining

#12

Post by mathieuh »

ThomPete wrote: post #8
mrspuratic wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capitalism 101, get rich by plundering the earth (and leave someone else to clean up the mess). Mining is a truly nasty business, and not just environmentally. No small problem is that of assigning value to a clean environment, or to sustainable practises. ETS anyone?

You are most likely using products based on mining to write that comment. Doesn't that make you complicit if we are to follow your hard stance here?

No, this is just a reformulation of the same old facile "if you're such an anti-capitalist why don't you move to the DPRK" comment

Re: China Wrestles with the Toxic Aftermath of Rare Earth Mining

#13

Post by throwaway2048 »

ThomPete wrote: post #7
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #2

The eternal problem of externalities. They ought to be priced into the cost of the rare earths, but doing so means you lose out to your less scrupulous competitors.

What I really wanna see is both negative and positive externalities. It feels like we are always only including negative externalities when we talk about things we don't like and positive when it's things we do like. We should always look at both sides.

The entire point of business and trade is to capture value from positive externalities, its delivered value is extremely apparent.

Re: China Wrestles with the Toxic Aftermath of Rare Earth Mining

#14

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

dalbasal wrote: post #10
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #2

The eternal problem of externalities. They ought to be priced into the cost of the rare earths, but doing so means you lose out to your less scrupulous competitors.

Pricing externalities has become such a common comment. Does anyone know good examples (family led also, but successful mostly) of pricing externalities? I mean the alternative is regulation and/or legislation. Those work pretty well when a reasonable (ie production still happens) of harmful processes/methods. Eg banning CFCs in certain products. I know of examples where these were deployed. Tldr: what is the best, b…

I think we hear a lot of them but don't see them in practice because it would reduce profits. It's like any other solution to a problem of capitalism.

Regarding regulation: something like a carbon tax is arguably pricing-in of an externality, but mandated by the government. That's actually what I think of when I suggest this, because I don't expect captialist actors to deal with these problems without being forced to somehow. In the free market, if an externality can be ignored to gain a competitive advantage, it will be.

Re: China Wrestles with the Toxic Aftermath of Rare Earth Mining

#15

Post by pjc50 »

ThomPete wrote: post #8
mrspuratic wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capitalism 101, get rich by plundering the earth (and leave someone else to clean up the mess). Mining is a truly nasty business, and not just environmentally. No small problem is that of assigning value to a clean environment, or to sustainable practises. ETS anyone?

You are most likely using products based on mining to write that comment. Doesn't that make you complicit if we are to follow your hard stance here?

Everyone is complicit in everything to a slight degree. That's simply no longer a useful thing to say, nor is it a means to dismiss an argument that something should not be done. It's just a statement that disentangling yourself from the system comes at an extremely high cost, if it is possible at all.

Re: China Wrestles with the Toxic Aftermath of Rare Earth Mining

#16

Post by keymone »

digitalengineer wrote: post #4

In the forth quarter of 2018, 46.89 million iPhones were sold worldwide. That's just the iPhones. Wouldn't it be great if products from Apple were easier to repair or upgrade instead of encouraging consumers to buy the latest model? It would also make it easier to recycle. How much mining would that prevent?

So what happens to old iPhones? Hard to believe they are all in a dump somewhere.

Re: China Wrestles with the Toxic Aftermath of Rare Earth Mining

#17

Post by lsd5you »

westiseast wrote: post #5

Perhaps it’s churlish to mention, but... China was happy to ignore environmental standards in order to corner the market in rare earth minerals. American miners couldn’t compete because they were already “internalizing” the environmental costs, and were priced out of the market. Once China had put everyone else out of business (and blocked foreign businesses from mining inside China), it started not only reducing out…

Which is why tariffs make a lot of sense. Yet there has been this massive movement of reaganite/right wing tariffs bashing for decades now - where the mantra of tariffs causing economic harm is mindlessly repeated. You would think they didn't generate tax revenue (and thus reduce taxes/improve economics elsewhere), and where not easier to collect than many other taxes.

I'm not denying the dangers. I can see how countries could fall into populist/short term positions or get involved in harmful escalating tit-for-tat increases, but this is a strawman when it comes to having moderate tariffs.

Re: China Wrestles with the Toxic Aftermath of Rare Earth Mining

#18

Post by adrianN »

westiseast wrote: post #5

Perhaps it’s churlish to mention, but... China was happy to ignore environmental standards in order to corner the market in rare earth minerals. American miners couldn’t compete because they were already “internalizing” the environmental costs, and were priced out of the market. Once China had put everyone else out of business (and blocked foreign businesses from mining inside China), it started not only reducing out…

So now American miners can start being cost competitive again.

Re: China Wrestles with the Toxic Aftermath of Rare Earth Mining

#19

Post by nerdponx »

keymone wrote: post #16
digitalengineer wrote: post #4

In the forth quarter of 2018, 46.89 million iPhones were sold worldwide. That's just the iPhones. Wouldn't it be great if products from Apple were easier to repair or upgrade instead of encouraging consumers to buy the latest model? It would also make it easier to recycle. How much mining would that prevent?

So what happens to old iPhones? Hard to believe they are all in a dump somewhere.

Why is it hard to believe?

Re: China Wrestles with the Toxic Aftermath of Rare Earth Mining

#20

Post by simonh »

digitalengineer wrote: post #4

In the forth quarter of 2018, 46.89 million iPhones were sold worldwide. That's just the iPhones. Wouldn't it be great if products from Apple were easier to repair or upgrade instead of encouraging consumers to buy the latest model? It would also make it easier to recycle. How much mining would that prevent?

iPhones have industry leading service lifetimes, often being passed on to other family members and there's a healthy second hand market. More Android phones are sold every year than iPhones and on average they are used for less than half as long[1] (average lifespan of a phone less than 2 years, iPhone economic lifetime 67 months).

iPhones also have industry leading ratings in recyclability[2]. That is probably the most important factor because it means the materials, including rare earths, could have an in-use life many times longer than that of the phone itself.

[1]https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/10/181016142434.h...

[2]https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/apple-iphon...

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