[Night_Thastus]

It's a frequent pattern of:

1: "We need to be more self-sufficient with minerals!"

2: "Let's try to kick-start more of our own industry digging it up!"

3: "Wow, that's expensive and can't compete with international prices."

4: "Better shut it down!"

5: Goto 1

Without ever getting that the point was never to be as profitable as overseas sources. Or getting the point and ignoring it.

[terminalshort]

The worst part is that most of number 3 is self imposed by the ridiculous amount of environmental review and litigation delays surrounding that process. Sure, cost of labor is some of it, but really it's not very much in comparison.

[throwway120385]

Having seen some former open pit mines I'm not entirely sure the environmental review is "ridiculous." One of them was basically a huge open pit full of acid.

[terminalshort]

Mine the metal or do without the tech that uses it. You have to choose. Years of environmental review do not help.

[toss1]

The environmental review WILL help if it is used to adjust the mining techniques so they don't destroy everything nearby to do the work, or even if it jist creates a reclamation / restoration plan (and yes, factor that into the price, it's trivial). Taking too long is a problem.

[terminalshort]

Then make laws and punish the people who break them. It doesn't do any good to litigate before the project has even started. DUI is a problem and you solve it by arresting drunk drivers, not making them fill out paperwork before they go to the bar.

[toss1]

Your proposal is to do nothing and then make sure the entire thing causes orders of magnitude greater costs and damage which can be irreparable for centuries.

That has ALREADY been tried, and it was an absolute disaster, killing people, wrecking lives, and wrecking vast areas of ecosystems including driving species to extinction. You clearly were not around when rivers literally caught fire or when pollution required entire areas of cities and towns to be evacuated and dug up (look up Superfund Sites), costing taxpayers hundreds of $Billions.

A billion dollar mining operation is not a quick trip to a bar, and it is not putting personal liberties at risk to require planning.

It is far better to PLAN ahead and AGREE on the requirements up front so the company and investors can make sound profit projections and the ecosystem is protected. It is far worse for everyone to let them cause irreparable damage then hit the company/investors with crushing legal actions after the fact.

Yes, I agree that such reviews need to be expedited, the delay does no one any good. But doing the reviews is crucial.

Please read some history and lookup Chesterton's Fence before whinging about topics of which you are clearly ignorant

[buckle8017]

That pit also happens to be a great place to do rare earths extraction since there is zero chance of it ever being cleaned up.

The acid is natural btw just from things leeching out of the rock walls.

[quotemstr]

Who cares? There's a ton of land out there.

[mschuster91]

> The worst part is that most of number 3 is self imposed by the ridiculous amount of environmental review and litigation delays surrounding that process.

Because, surprise, we do not want more Superfund sites. Like, the Silicon Valley is the US' biggest cluster of Superfund sites by far.

At the same time, it is very convenient that there are lots of piss poor countries that have very difficult/dirty to mine resources... be it China, Congo or whatever. These countries didn't have the luxury to think decades into the future, and capitalism doesn't have built-in ethics, and this is how we ended up here.

The EU tried to introduce supply chain laws aiming at cutting back at this kind of exploitation, but the pressure from industry was immense.

[terminalshort]

If SV is full of superfund sites then I guess they aren't as bad as I thought because millions of people live there and are doing just fine.

[Octoth0rpe]

> Like, the Silicon Valley is the US' biggest cluster of Superfund sites by far

Source? My understanding was that NJ was the worse.

Wikipedia shows 94 SF sites in CA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Superfund_sites_in_Cal...

And 115 in NJ: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Superfund_sites_in_New...

And of course, CA is _much much_ larger. If we look at the entire bos/wash corridor, it's huuugely than CA.

[Supermancho]

Tungsten demand is real and bulk sources are quite scarce, today. It would be helpful if the historical charts went back farther than 2016. Where did the US get Tungsten in the 80s and 90s? South Korea, China, and Russia. The US and Canada had Tungsten mines, but the value wasn't there due to international pricing undercutting the industry. America's dogged federal agenda to break free of all Chinese influence or Capitalism, which will go first? We know the answer.