Isn't rare earth metals mining insanely pollutive? I've heard they can be found all over the world but only China mines them massively because nobody else is willing to destroy their ecology.
It certainly depends on the industrial process as a whole. But it's worth pointing out that nobody ever had a complaint about gold, silver, platinum or diamond mining, nor about the unimaginable volumes of ore processed to acquire iron and copper. But somehow these days everyone likes to think that they know that rare earth metals are "the devil".
Of course. Everyone knows that rare-earth metal extraction involves ugly, environmentally destructive strip mining, and the metals themselves are primarily used to build components for first-world toys and gadgets, such as electronics and batteries in mobile phones, computers, or electric cars.
In contrast, gold, silver, platinum and diamonds are extracted through perfectly ordinary environmentally destructive strip mining, and they have important applications such as jewelry, tax evasion and more jewelry, much of it critical to important industries such as the wedding industry.