To me, this is the key paragraph: "California's stringent regulatory framework, designed to prioritize environmental protections, has made domestic processing particularly challenging. Across the rare earths industry, this dependence on Chinese facilities exposes a significant vulnerability in the rare earth supply chain, leaving the United States and other countries reliant on foreign infrastructure to produce critical materials essential for technologies such as electric vehicles and advanced military systems."
Strict regulations often result in exporting environmental damage to poorer nations. Case in point: We won't approve Pebble Mine in Alaska but we are encouraging development of a huge copper mine in Africa. (I'm not in favor of Pebble!)
I believe much of our gold ore is sent to China for processing as well.
It's hard to imagine any kind of mining being able to be completely clean, but I was encouraged by the nano-filters discussed in the NYT article.
That’s very cool of you to notice that I scooped The New York Times, my employer for a decade. They tend to give short shift to California and the west in general. I read about the Mountain Pass Mine in Ernest Scheyder’s book The War Below and then in Vince Beiser’s @powermetal, both of which are excellent. When I wrote MP’s PR guy to answer some questions, I was very pleased with how responsive he was to some guy writing about them in a blog. But that article got a fair amount of traction, so they’re probably happy with it. I’ve done a couple of pieces on extractive industries in California and I find it a fascinating topic. I’m not in favor of the pebble mine at all. These are very different kinds of projects. Good friends of mine did a big documentary about pebble, and that’s clearly worth vigorous effort to protect the salmon spawning areas, and the gorgeous untouched environment up there. Really appreciate you reading. I’ve enjoyed your newsletter very much.
Nice, in-depth article, and you scooped the New York Times by a couple of months: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/13/science/berkeley-mine-pit-rare-earths.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
To me, this is the key paragraph: "California's stringent regulatory framework, designed to prioritize environmental protections, has made domestic processing particularly challenging. Across the rare earths industry, this dependence on Chinese facilities exposes a significant vulnerability in the rare earth supply chain, leaving the United States and other countries reliant on foreign infrastructure to produce critical materials essential for technologies such as electric vehicles and advanced military systems."
Strict regulations often result in exporting environmental damage to poorer nations. Case in point: We won't approve Pebble Mine in Alaska but we are encouraging development of a huge copper mine in Africa. (I'm not in favor of Pebble!)
I believe much of our gold ore is sent to China for processing as well.
It's hard to imagine any kind of mining being able to be completely clean, but I was encouraged by the nano-filters discussed in the NYT article.
That’s very cool of you to notice that I scooped The New York Times, my employer for a decade. They tend to give short shift to California and the west in general. I read about the Mountain Pass Mine in Ernest Scheyder’s book The War Below and then in Vince Beiser’s @powermetal, both of which are excellent. When I wrote MP’s PR guy to answer some questions, I was very pleased with how responsive he was to some guy writing about them in a blog. But that article got a fair amount of traction, so they’re probably happy with it. I’ve done a couple of pieces on extractive industries in California and I find it a fascinating topic. I’m not in favor of the pebble mine at all. These are very different kinds of projects. Good friends of mine did a big documentary about pebble, and that’s clearly worth vigorous effort to protect the salmon spawning areas, and the gorgeous untouched environment up there. Really appreciate you reading. I’ve enjoyed your newsletter very much.
Thank you. Glad we found each other.
To be honest, I noticed your writing quality first. Then I dug around in your about page to discover your background.👍
I can't stand how NYT treats California ...
I worked with Adam Nagourney when I was in the Los Angeles bureau, and I don’t think he really gets LA at all.
Case in point: This same dumb article is written, like, every 15-20 years. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/11/us/california-turmoil-resilience.html
Did you happen to come across this essay around the time of the LA fires? One of the best pieces I've ever read about this place: https://steveschmidt.substack.com/p/the-lessons-of-the-titanic-are-enduring