Get ready to destroy the earth for profit.

Conflicted uovote.

100% gonna happen, but upset about it just the same.

The truth is controversial.

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Well the location is becoming less arctic every year… :(

Very much so. And I agree with you.

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These minerals will get mined in China regardless, so the energy consumption to mine them is essentially a wash.

The energy used to transport them will decrease because of the lesser distance.

I trust Sweden more than China when it comes to mitigation of environmental impacts of tailing ponds, habitat loss, etc.

More electric cars means more efficient use of energy and increased use of renewable sources. That means less oil from the Alberta Tar Sands, for those of you concerned about the arctic.

Overall I see this as a net positive.

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Sweden's NATO membership is going get a lot more interesting.

What's worse is instead of spending a little to save humanity (the earth will survive fine if not better without us) the billionaire class wants to spend exponentially more money to take a garbage planet like Mars, and "fix" it.

Update, since they are no longer rare, they will be henceforth known as "Earths"

Colonizing Mars is stupid. Orders of magnitude more expensive and dangerous than just fixing what we've already ruined. I don't only blame billionaires. Regular people are too short sighted to see beyond the next tweet or insta post (or Reddit comment)

Get ready? They've been doing that since money was invented.

If we can get rid of Co2 production via Petrochemicals it is a benefit to every living organism on this planet. I would trade rare earth mining for batteries over endless oil consumption any day.

> Get ready to keep destroying the earth for profit.

Fixed it for you.

All this will seem rather pointless when we start mining on the moon.

You are absolutely correct thank you

Ideally, you use up all the resources of your geopolitical foes even if it enriches them and save your nations resources for later

Homo Sapiens remains on collision course with a planet Earth gone hostile to its further proliferation. From this perspective, rare earth mining is more of same. Species don't reverse their own decline.

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I think near Earth asteroid mining might come first. But yeah, lots of stuff out in space for us to mine, if we ever get around to it.

Until the natives start resisting.......I have seen several documentaries on it.

And if your "geopolitical foe" uses all the riches you've helped them gain to expand their influence into Africa and gain more resources?

Or if they cut off supply and you're woefully behind on being able to capitalize on your own resources?

Besides the obvious strategical failings of this notion, we don't live in some stupid game where people are keeping score or will be declared "the winner". If you're approaching geopolitics with the attitude that there will be both winners and losers then you don't understand the first thing about it. The human race is facing extinction. Either everyone wins or everyone dies.

Considering that many of the ‘rare earth’ elements were discovered in the 18th and 19th centuries from ore that originated from Sweden, I’m simply shocked!

BTW, the US has large ore deposits of these elements too. Much of the rare earth ores also contain thorium, a radioactive element. When the US enacted environmental regulations requiring the safe disposition of the thorium contaminate, the production cost in the US increased. US mines shut down and mining and production moved offshore.

What most people don't realize is that rare earth metals aren't rare. The only difficulty and problem with producing them is the incredibly dirty refining process. There are huge deposits all over the world but we've let China take the market lead in production by letting them pollute their land rather than ours.

are they called black metal?

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Yeah let's not destroy the Earth. And keep buying those metals from China.

Lmfao electric cars an insignificant factor when it comes to climate change. The solution isn’t more environmentally friendly cars, it’s adequate public transportation to significantly reduce our reliance on cars in the first place

I mean we gotta build bypasses, right? 🤷🏽😕

These metals are necessary for electric cars. People want to think EVs are green. But they’re dependent upon intensive resource extraction.

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Electric vehicles are still a meaningful improvement as long as your grid is green. If the grid isn't green, it's largely meaningless.

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Mining metals is significantly greener and more sustainable than using fossil fuels. Engineering can potentially stabilize the ground around a mine, and minimize the environmental damage. Undoing the damage of fossil fuels involves basically reversing thermodynamics.

China will buy it up, and use to for their own purposes.

But electric car will save the environment lol

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Yup, many of these deposits all over the world.

Refining can be done properly without hurting the environment too much but that costs money of course.

China skipped that step and so can do it cheap than the rest, plus cheap labour helps too. So they pretty much cornered the market and then decided to limit certain exports.

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Iirc, consensus is that electric cars, even with electricity from coal, is still 60 to 80 percent less polluting than a petrol fueled car.

Finally. Big find in a responsible country

We're the only natives in this solar system.

So what does that mean for this news? Is this resource meaningful only if Sweden decides to pollute their land?

That is generally true (but depends on costs associated with moving the electricity) although coal is so absolutely terrible that it's still pretty bad. I suppose it's probably serviceable if you have transitioning sources like natural gas.

Still, a bus is better if you have anything like carrying capacity number of people.

Well, transporting fuel has its costs too.

Also, agree with the public transport thing, but people would revolt if you denied them the use of their dear cars.

(I don't have a car by they way, nor a drivers license even, but have the luxury to live in a place with excellent, cheap public transport, taxi's and no daily commute due to my job)

Well that's for the ppl and corps to decide

It means unless Sweden is willing to spend a ton of money to make it less damaging to the environment they will pollute the heck out of their land. If they choose to spend that money they won't be able to produce at anywhere close to competitive prices.

Unless they want to make a strategic decision to subsidize the industry to not be helpless to the whims of China it doesn't make economic sense to develop it. The U.S. is considering just that since our military and high tech industry requires large quantities of rare earths.

The United States appears to have greater resources and incentives to develop this industry. Perhaps Sweden and our allies would prefer to rely on us. However, I wonder what sort of production capacity the United States would aim to achieve considering how it creates much pollution.

Rare earth metals aren't rare, they are called rare earth because they are usually unprofitable.

Thorium salt nuclear reactors exist.

Go see it now before it's ruined by mining so your 3rd grader can have the latent iPhone

"Don't run Swedes, we are your friends!"

Not clear though if the mining will be profitable.

Fun fact: In Germany there are known rare earth sites with at least the same amount of metals, but they need 100 times the value to recover them.

Swedish company said in an interview today: 10 to 15 years till mining can start, at least.

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Yup, a lot of products use iron oxide(rust) and it's derivatives. To produce it in the U.S. you need do inside in a facility, contain the chemical run off, and can only produce a maximum amount per EPA regulations. In China, they just spray the metal outdoors and let the chemicals leech into the ground.

"Cheap labour" you mean slave labour

You are literally using rare earth metals to type your edgy response.

Who wouldve thought kiruna would find minerals in the mine that is literally relocating the town

It's not only for electric cars. These metals are needed for wind turbines and electric bikes, too.

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Dont say this too loud !! The russians might take you next

Yes, but there's no slave labor there to exploit.