Review: The Rare Metals War

 The Rare Metals War is another book about the high cost of renewal energy. It makes several statements - one is that the current method of mining was ceded to China because of environmental action in the West driving out mines in those countries. The argument is that China strategically also tried to kill mining companies in the west by dumping supplies and driving their competition out of business.

purifying a single tonne of rare earths requires using at least 200 cubic metres of water, which then becomes saturated with acids and heavy metals.23 Will this water go through a water-treatment plant before it is released into rivers, soils, and ground water? Very rarely. The Chinese could have opted for clean mining, but chose not to. From one end of the rare metals production line to the other, virtually nothing in China is done according to the most basic ecological and health standards. So as rare metals have become ubiquitous in green and digital technologies, the exceedingly toxic sludge they produce has been contaminating water, soil, the atmosphere, and the flames of blast furnaces — representing the four elements essential to life. The result is that producing rare metals has become one of the most polluting — and secretive — industries in China. (kindle loc 369)

In this way, the book echoes Dani Rodrik's  2007 book about why fundamentally trading with totalitarian government is very different from trading with a democratically elected government:

Think of labor and environmental standards, for example. Poor countries argue that they cannot afford to have the same stringent standards in these areas as the advanced countries... Democratic countries such as India and Brazil can legitimately argue that their practices are consistent with the wishes of their own citizens, and that therefore it is inappropriate for labor groups or NGOs in advacned countries to tell them what standard they should have... But non-democratic countries such as China, do not pass the same prima facie test. The assertion that labor rights and the environment are trampled for the benefit of commercial advantage cannot be as easily dismissed in those countries. Consequently, exports of nondemocratic countries deserve greater scrutiny when they entail costly dislocations or adverse distributional consequences in importing questions.

This is nothing new and hopefully not a controversial statement. What I think is controversial is that this state of affairs cannot change. To some extent the author asserts that it can and must change:

Reopening mines in the West is the best possible decision we can make for the environment. Relocating our dirty industries has helped keep Western consumers in the dark about the true environmental cost of our lifestyles, while giving other nation-states free rein to extract and process minerals in even worse conditions than would have applied had they still been mined in the West, without the slightest regard for the environment. The effects of returning mining operations to the West would be positive. We would instantly realise — to our horror — the true cost of our self-declared modern, connected, and green world. We can well imagine how having quarries ‘in our backyard’ would put an end to our indifference and denial, and drive our efforts to contain the resulting pollution. Because we would not want to live like the Chinese, we would pile pressure onto our governments to ban even the smallest release of cyanide, and to boycott companies operating without the full array of environmental accreditations. (kindle loc 2363)

However, the bulk of the book spends a lot more time on how polluting the situation is, possibly causing some to think that the pollution is required and not really something we can do much about. To some extent, I think there also needs to be an analysis of what the localization of the pollution is. Not every pollutant is a greenhouse gas, where emissions anywhere in the world is detrimental to everyone else. In many cases the pollutant is localized, destroying local water supplies and farming --- it's a tragedy, but I'm afraid the reality of the situation is that the public is unlikely to care very much if the local population (i.e., the Chinese) don't care and would rather have food on the table and die later of cancer than die earlier of starvation.  The author of the book doesn't go into these details and doesn't seem to have done much research about the topic.

I think Volt Rush is the better book, covering much the same topics.