China Wrestles with the Toxic Aftermath of Rare Earth Mining • Hacker News Board

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

#51

Post by bluGill » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 12:56 PM UTC

wayoutthere wrote: post #41

titzer wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now you realize how the game theory of economics is fundamentally at odds with the natural world and sustainability. It always pays to defect now, and the loudest voices are usually the rich players who moan about economic growth and "burdensome regulations". Mining and logging in the US was very much like this before regulation, but that was on a much smaller scale, with simpler technology and less energy available…

Policy doesn’t even need to be rolled back much of the time: they can just stall progress while they figure loopholes around the existing policies. Which has been the GOP strategy for almost 40 years.

Don't blame the GOP, both parties have been doing it for the last 200 years (the republican party isn't that old, but the Whigs before them as well). They target different areas to stall progress. Sometimes the stalling is good, sometimes is bad - and it is often a matter of opinion which is good or bad.

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

#52

Post by adventured » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 12:59 PM UTC

arcticfox wrote: post #48

adrianN wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So now American miners can start being cost competitive again.

> So now American miners They don't exist anymore though. According to Australia, all of the rare earth expertise is in China now, so it's not as simple as just reopening, and in fact might be very difficult

The US Mountain Pass mine in California is operational. They send all of the output to China for processing. That will change in a few years as the US brings new domestic processing facilities online. The US chemical company, Blue Line Corp, has partnered with Australia's Lynas to build a facility in Texas. They're forecasting two years from now to have it running. That facility should enable the most critical / sensitive domestic demand to become entirely independent of China.

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

#53

Post by dalbasal » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 12:59 PM UTC

shawnz wrote: post #42

dalbasal wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what I meant, except a mature, existing example. Carbon tax is the biggest question on the table. A lot of economists like it because theory. I'm skeptical, tbh, even of quasi-dynamic versions (like taxing fuel), and I tend to think taxes/subsidies (for example) on the purchase of vehicles would work better. Open to have my mind changed though, hence the question. Where have laws been used to successfully crea…

So rather than a cost proportional to how much waste you actually create, you'd rather have it be an equal tax on all drivers? That would eliminate the whole benefit of a carbon tax for middle class: If you're just driving to work every day then you shouldn't have to pay as much as the people and organizations who are creating substantially more waste than you are. I think this approach would ostracize drivers even w…

I'm not proposing anything, just discussing. To me, the first question is "will this work?" not "is this just/fair." Fairness and justice have to come in too, but the first question to ask if you're deciding about creating a price system is "can we?"

We can obviously do fuel taxes. We do. That correlates pretty directly to emissions (within the domain of driving), but... we have experience here. We know that the demand elasticity to price is low in the long term and extremely low in the short term.

Ie, You need a very big/painful tax to achieve a relatively small decline in emissions.

There are questions of fairness/justice in all scenarios. Proportionality to waste is one issue. Proportionality to income is another. Different people will have different perspectives. But, before we even get to those, the question to answer is "what's our incentive?" Which (imo)needs to be answered in terms of reduced emission volume.

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

#54

Post by simonh » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 1:00 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #24

keymone wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

In places like China, where labor is very cheap, they're most likely disassembled into parts, which are then used to repair other iPhones - much like it happens with Android phones. In places where labor isn't cheap, I can't imagine where else would they go but a landfill.

Hand an iPhone in to an Apple Store or some affiliated retailers, or online and they will recycle it for you for free. They built a family of robots to automate disassembling them.

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

#55

Post by westiseast » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 1:08 PM UTC

yorwba wrote: post #39

RHSeeger wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not churlish at all. > Environmental experts and local officials say the cost of the cleanup should not be shouldered by the Chinese government alone. The Chinese companies and government knew what they were doing and benefited greatly from their actions. I would argue that they are exactly the ones that should be shouldering the the cost... alone.

Seems like you agree then that the cost should not be shouldered by the government alone, but also by the companies who benefited. The article mentions that most mining operations were illegal until recently and the Longnan government only managed to shut down the last of them in 2017. Some local officials probably lined their pockets by looking the other way, but the central government likely didn't see any of those…

The central government almost certainly ‘profited’ (ie. benefited) from this whole situation.

1) Strategically, it cornered the market and has been able to use that dominance to great geopolitical effect.

2) Economic development: environmental regulation and ‘fair’ competition with foreign firms would’ve held back the industry in China, costing jobs and the bottom line for the Chinese state. The breakneck economic growth has been achieved in large part because the Chinese state put economic development ahead of all other concerns.

3) Internal politics. The basic balance between local and central government since the 1990s were that local governments had to fend for themselves financially, and in return central government wouldn’t bog them down with regulation and oversight. The lack of environmental regulation of what is a nationally and strategically vital industry reflects that balance.

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

#56

Post by yoz-y » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 1:12 PM UTC

tim333 wrote: post #49

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly if country A can make a product X% cheaper than country B because of having less stringent regulation (be it environmental, quality, labor laws...) it's just logical to me that country B should impose a tariff of X% on that product. I'm not much of a free-market capitalism, but if you have to be, then a free market is not a free market if not everyone is playing by the same rules, right?

That sounds sensible but the devil's in the details. How do you figure how much of X% is environmental? Do you insist the Chinese have similar pay and conditions for workers? How do you check where the rare earths you are buying in say Singapore actually came from?

In an ideal world some entity could force country A to include externalities such as environment in the price of the goods.

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

#57

Post by specialist » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 1:22 PM UTC

dalbasal wrote: post #45

wffurr wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cost of regulatory compliance is the way to price in externalities. The other option is a lawsuit after the damage is done.

That's not quite "pricing."

aka the cost of doing business, overhead

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

#58

Post by jacknews » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 1:24 PM UTC

simonh wrote: post #20

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 m…

"iPhones also have industry leading ratings in recyclability[2]"

How many are actually recycled though?

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

#59

Post by specialist » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 1:27 PM UTC

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…

Sin taxes might meet your criteria. Many jurisdictions use revenue from cigarette taxes for good cause.

Building codes are also a pretty good example.

A complimentary strategy is performance standards. A carrot (incentive) to regulatory sticks.

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

#60

Post by tomp » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 1:28 PM UTC

lsd5you wrote: post #17

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 count…

I agree with you. Strict environmental and employment standards in US and EU make no sense if companies can just relocate to China and pollute & abuse people there.

I'm a strong proponent of "fair" trade (not "free" trade) for this reason - I'm OK with production moving elsewhere because salaries are lower, there's more resources and/or better climate for production, but it's completely unacceptable if it's done to skirt local environmental/employment/anti-corruption laws, and should be taxed heavily.

I don't quite understand your criticism of "right wing tariff bashing" though - Trump's the one who's bent on introducing tariffs, whereas past governments (including left-wing Obama) were happy to play along...