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

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