Rare earth mining makes green energy not so green

[IsailedawayfromFR]

Hillary Clinton’s energy plan would wreak havoc on the environment, in a far more devastating and lasting way than anything Donald Trump has proposed. That’s because of “clean” energy’s dirty secret - it’s not very green at all.

Just look at what she said in Monday night’s debate.

“I think the science is real,” Clinton said, referring to climate change. “And I think it's important that we grip this and deal with it, both at home and abroad. And here's what we can do. We can deploy a half a billion more solar panels. We can have enough clean energy to power every home. We can build a new modern electric grid. That’s a lot of jobs; that’s a lot of new economic activity.”

But what would 500 million new solar panels mean to the environment? First, remember that modern, efficient solar panels are only made possible by using rare earth minerals.

Rare earths are 17 minerals that are indispensible in high-tech manufacturing. China produces most of the world’s supply.

“Processing rare earths is a dirty business,” The Guardian reported last year. “Their ore is often laced with radioactive materials such as thorium, and separating the wheat from the chaff requires huge amounts of carcinogenic toxins - sulphates, ammonia and hydrochloric acid. Processing one ton of rare earths produces 2,000 tons of toxic waste; Baotou (China’s) rare earths enterprises produce 10 million tons of wastewater per year.”

Yet without those minerals, we can’t produce a single solar panel – much less half a billion of them.

The same goes for wind turbines.

“Manufacturing wind turbines is a resource-intensive process,” notes the Institute for Energy Research. “A typical wind turbine contains more than 8,000 different components, many of which are made from steel, cast iron, and concrete. One such component are magnets made from neodymium and dysprosium, rare earth minerals mined almost exclusively in China, which controls 95 percent of the world’s supply of rare earth minerals.”

Even Mother Jones magazine, which should be all on board for Clinton’s green energy plan, sees the environmental threat posed by rare earths and the energy systems that depend upon them.

“The elements used to power all our high-tech gadgets come from a very dirty industry in which rich nations extract the good stuff from the earth - and leave poor countries to clean up the mess,” the magazine reported.
http://www.tylerpaper.com/TP-Opinion/241499/rare-earth-mining-makes-green-energy-not-so-green

'Green' means the money moving from the suckers to the palms of the connected, not 'Green' like many are led to believe.

[Free Vulcan]

Oops.

There's very few aspects of a higher standard of living that doesn't involve something the lefties disdain. Yet if we all returned to the lifestyle they wished, most of them would die, because they have no skills to survive that kind of lifestyle.

My response to lefties that advocate that green crap is to demand they live completely self sufficiently with no modern conveniences for one year, and if they survive it, then they can run their yap trap about how the world should be.

[IsailedawayfromFR]

Oops.

There's very few aspects of a higher standard of living that doesn't involve something the lefties disdain. Yet if we all returned to the lifestyle they wished, most of them would die, because they have no skills to survive that kind of lifestyle.

My response to lefties that advocate that green crap is to demand they live completely self sufficiently with no modern conveniences for one year, and if they survive it, then they can run their yap trap about how the world should be.

You are describing almost to a tee the definition of a liberal:  One that 'knows' better what is best for humanity, but excepting themselves.

Easy to see through them, except they also wish to keep the masses uneducated so their schemes are hidden from them.

Executing Karl Marx's theory to perfection.