Oil vs rare earths

The news today is about an oil spill along the California coast. What is not in the news is the environmental damage caused by the mining of rare earth metals. Here are a few examples. Brazil is a major producer of niobium. New claims for mining has skyrocketed from 3 to 36 percent within one year. If granted, 23 percent of the Amazon forest will fall victim to deforestation. China's Yangtze River, the third-longest in the world, is now so polluted that nearly half the people who depend on it, some 200 million, are without safe drinking water. Open pit mining, long ago banned in the coal industry, is the standard way of mining rare earth metals. The annual demand for rare earths doubled in 15 years and will triple by 2030. These estimates do not include the push by the new green deal. Once again politics will emphasize one area but not the other.