Yep, we need to put the FREE back into Free Enterprise!
Let America produce again!
To get rid of restrictions, you’d have to make government so small, as one FReeper’s tag put it, to drown it in a bathtub. Then America could pick up again and be a great nation once more. (as long as Obama is in office and Democrats have a majority, America is not a great nation)
Aside from that, I’ll work in a mine as long as the health hazards are minimized. Asthma sucks
Not for long. Obama will put a moratorium on digging too, and the EPA will block all attempts for permits as mining causes global warming.
Correct. China can dig an ship it cheaper to the US because they have NO environmental concerns.
I find this assertion very far fetched.
First, we do not have significant deposits of rare earth elements, as far as I know.
Second, it would take (as other posters have stated) lotsa years of enviro lawsuits to open any such mine.
Third, rare earths are, uhhh, rare. Very rare. Prevalence in the earth’s crust in the ten-thousandths and hundred-thousandths of a given weight. At the point where these minerals are 5 or 10 or 100x as costly as gold, they are not going to form the foundation of anything approaching economic viability.
Calls for “free market” are all well and good, but lacking a Chinese source for these elements puts them out of the range of commercial viability. Sure, speculators and mine owners will become filthy rich, perhaps, if they can get past the enviro concerns and open a mine. But if our flat screens end up quadrupling or octupling in price it won’t be a happy condition. On the other hand, we don’t make any of that stuff here anyway. Another source will just have to be found. I think Russia has decent deposits of REs. Heh.
Now for sure, a mine doesn’t just extract one mineral. For example, virtually all large silver mines are actually copper, zinc, and tin mines with silver (and some gold) as byproducts. So there’s that. But no mine is going to open just as a source of these rare minerals. At the point where they are too expensive to extract, it will still be cheaper to buy them from the Chinese. IMHO.
A portion of the rare earths ~ the lanthanides ~ are actually a byproduct of radioactive decay.
This is a special case of environmental concern ~ not the normal sort of thing where we are all worried about typical heavy metals, cyanide, and killing snail darters.
They use both magnetic and gravity type operations to separate the metals out of the ores ~ usually called "heavy sands".
In short, it's hot stuff ~ and just making it safe for humans to participate in costs something.
Those "dog hole" mines in China are being shut down as fast as the Chinese can find them because of the lack of controls to prevent radioactive debris from being tossed about. Guess it has turned into a disaster for them.
“
Chinese Threat on Rare Earth Minerals Could Revitalize U.S. Mines
“
Revitalize?
When Obama and his moronic head of the EPA are in control?
Stick it, China! Axcess News headlines the prospect: Largest Rare Earth Mine in the World Discovered in Nebraska.
http://newenergyandfuel.com/http:/newenergyandfuel/com/2010/05/19/buried-rare-earth-element-treasure-in-nebraska/
Not if zer0 has anything to do with it. Mines mean jobs, can’t be having any of that now!
The obvious solution is to reduce our dependence on foreign rare earths. Expect obama, boxer, et al to ban all domestic mining of rare earths, and raise taxes on all domestic sales, pass laws criminalizing the use of anything containing rare earths in favor of something “greener,” and have a new Rare Earth Czar suggest “guidelines” for conserving what few rare earth products we have.
Stop buying computers, iPods, iPads, defense electronics, flat-screen TV’s, all other TV’s, radios, GPS units, electronic watches, and turn off all the ones you already have, and cultivate home gardens where we grow our own yttrium, scandium and the rest of the two bottom lines on the Periodic Table, and, oh yeah, continue pouring trillions of dollars into China for the importation of rare earths to the US, so that democrats can remain on the China payroll as they are on the Saudi and Mideast oil payroll for resisting true oil independence.