Mountain Top Removal

Most people in North Carolina have heard of the issues with coal ash ponds. The story of how the coal is shipped to the state is also full of broken lives. North Carolina has no coal of its own and is forced to import the black mineral from West Virginia. Up to half of all of North Carolina’s coal comes from a controversial mining process known as mountaintop removal (Sturgis, 2014).  

Mountaintop removal involves destroying all the vegetation from a mountaintop and blasting away the rock to access coal seams inside the mountain. In 2002, at the request of the Bush administration, Congress changed the Clean Water Act to allow the dumping of mountain top debris into rivers at the bottoms of valleys. The change in the law led to a rapid increase in mountaintop removal. A staggering 1.4 million acres of forests have been lost since 2002. The forest loss led to a decease in native species including endangered ones. The headwaters of streams in West Virginia have been so polluted by acid mine drainage that two thirds of fish in those streams are now gone (Ecological, n.d.). 

The health impacts to humans from mountaintop removal can be severe. Communities that live near mines see an increase in lung cancer and low birth weights. There have also been increases in diseases such as COPD and high blood pressure. Chemicals used in mine blasting have gotten into the water system and poisoned residents with heavy metals. Explosions from blasting have caused flying debris that have destroyed homes and even killed people (Health, n.d.).  
 
West Virginia exports up to a 100 million tons of coal every year. Each train coal car caries up to 120 tons of coal and can lose up to a ton of that coal per trip. Soil samples taken from neighborhoods near the coal lines have found arsenic levels five times normal levels. Coal from the trains coats nearby buildings with black stains. Most of the people forced to live near the coal lines are poor and lack political power. Living in close proximity to coal trains has negative health impacts and can reduce life expectancy by ten years. Norfolk Southern, which runs the trains, gives large campaign donations to local politicians who help insulate them from the health issues their trains create (Geiling, 2018). 

References can be found here

Green Metal

Most everyone has seen or read the Lorax at this point. If you haven’t, than fifty year old spoilers! In the Lorax, Dr. Seuss tells the story of the destruction of the truffula tree by unscrupulous industrialists. The industrialization of the forest leads to climate change and demographic change with the local wildlife. A classic tell of the tragedy of the commons. 

So what would happen if someone discovered the truffula tree today? Harvesters would have to deal with work stoppages for OSHA safety inspections. The EPA could put controls on emissions and limit water usage. The FTC could force earnings disclosers about truffula tree reserves. If the truffula tree became endangered, NGO’s would have standing to sue to stop additional harvesting. The natural result of these inspections would force truffula tree harvesters into parts of the world that don’t have worker safety or environmental laws. 

What are the truffula trees of today? One contender is rare earth metals/elements (REEs). According to Apple, the company has sold over one billion iPhones in the past decade. The phones wouldn’t be possible without rare earths. They fuel the modern economy from batteries, to computers. REEs are mined in countries that don’t have strong environmental and safety regulations. Those mines undercut the viability of mines in countries that do have, or follow, regulations. 

The US used to be one of the largest suppliers of REEs. Now, the US imports 70% of its rare earths from China even though the US has one of the largest rare earth mines in the world. The US mine went bankrupt due to environmental cleanup costs and “dumping” of cheap REEs by China. The mine recently reopened but it ships its ore to China for processing. In order for US REE mines to be truly viable, consumers would need to choose to pay more for better, and more expensive, mining practices.

Moving society to better mining practices is complicated. Part of the answer is to increase product lifespans by replacing the function REEs are serving in our economy with other materials that don’t require mining or toxic processing. For those functions that can’t be replaced, governments and individuals need to disincentivize imports of cheap REEs mined without regard to social or environmental costs. One possible way this could be achieved would be to raise the price of cheap minerals with environmental import taxes or a value added tax. These taxes could be invested to extended product lifespans or to develop greener product replacements.   

Another option would be voluntary. Behavioral economics could be used to incentivize consumers to purchase REE products at higher prices. Pushing the public to want to pay for more expensive metal could come in the form of explaining the damage current rare earth mining practices cause; a branding and marketing label centered around “green metal,” or “organic metal.” Consumers already pay more for “organic” food and might welcome a way to pay for greener electronics.

China's Circular Ownership of Rare Earth Elements

The mining of Rare Earth Elements (REEs) is a complicated situation dependent upon China. The majority of REEs are currently sourced from mines in Baotou, China. Baotou has had to deal with chronic smog and radioactive point source pollution from its rare earth mines. A tailings pond at the mine was not properly lined and over time, water from the pond allowed thorium to leach into the groundwater and poison both local farms and residents (Greene, 2012). 

As China matures and adopts the norms of the international community, I expect mining in the Baotou region to be reduced for the health and welfare of the citizens who live there. Which would boost the cost of consumer goods that use REEs. Also, given their dominant market position, China could choose to use REEs as a means to exert geopolitical hegemony on issues such as the ongoing crisis in North Korea; further boosting prices (Bradsher, 2010).

In the past, China has made it difficult to obtain rare earths through the use of export quotas. They justified their actions by claiming that they were helping the environment. Many observers believe their main motivation was actually an attempt to boost the value of their rare earth reserves. Japan complained about China’s REE pricing to the World Trade Organization. The WTO forced China to lift their mining quotas. China is now considering new mining rules and regulatory uncertainty is causing price fluctuation in the rare earth market (Paul, 2015).

REEs are valuable to China because they are irreplaceable. Rare earths are expensive to mine and would have been replaced by the market if they weren't essential (Hadlington, 2014). In the near future, one of the largest sources of REEs might be our own electronic waste. Rare earth elements are a integral part of LEDs, which are quickly replacing other light bulbs. Analysts predict that by 2020, there will be enough LEDs in circulation that e-waste will be an important source of rare earth elements (Jamasmie, 2017). Ironically, even in this scenario, the largest source of REEs would still be China because they are “largest e-waste dumping site in the world (Watson, 2013).” 

References
Bradsher, Keith, “Amid Tension, China Blocks Vital Exports to Japan.” New York Times, 22 SEP 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/23/business/global/23rare.html

Greene, Jay “Digging for rare earths: The mines where iPhones are born.” Cnet, 26 SEP 2012, https://www.cnet.com/news/digging-for-rare-earths-the-mines-where-iphones-are-born/

Hadlington, Simon, “Rare element substitution a tricky proposition.” Chemistry World, 06 JAN 2014, https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/rare-element-substitution-a-tricky-proposition/6936.article

Paul, Sonali “China’s rare earths quotas go, possible new moves stoke supply doubts.” Reuters, 07 JAN 2015,  http://www.reuters.com/article/china-rareearths-producers-idUSL3N0UL65220150107

Watson, Ivan, “China: The electronic wastebasket of the world.” CNN, 30 MAY 2013, http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/30/world/asia/china-electronic-waste-e-waste/index.html