The Environmental Devastation Caused by the Production of Electric Vehicles

The West has mostly outsourced rare-earth mining, to China. They get all of the toxic waste associated with that. China Has Paid a High Price for Its Dominance in Rare Earths - The New York Times.

If you're not clear on how Rare Earths figure in our technology, there is an explanation below the embedded video.

Of course the fact that China doesn't give a damn about the environmental devastation visited upon people far from the country's capital, means that the production of rare earth metals is much cheaper in China than can be managed in civilized countries.

For decades in northern China, toxic sludge from rare earth processing has been dumped into a four-square-mile artificial lake. In south-central China, rare earth mines have poisoned dozens of once-green valleys and left hillsides stripped to barren red clay.

Achieving dominance in rare earths came with a heavy cost for China, which largely tolerated severe environmental damage for many years.

The article, which was originally in the New York Times, used past tense in that last sentence. I'm not really sure that the attitude of the Chinese government toward the environmental impacts has changed.

An artificial lake of sludge known as the Weikuang Dam, four square miles in size, holds the waste left over after metals are extracted from mined ore. During the winter and spring, the sludge dries out. The dust that then blows off the lake is contaminated with lead, cadmium and other heavy metals, including traces of radioactive thorium, according to technical papers by Chinese scholars.

During the summer rainy season, the sludge becomes coated with a layer of water that mixes with poisons and thorium. This dangerous mix seeps into the groundwater underneath the lake.

This is the MGUY Australia video Quickie: China's environmental DEVASTATION from rare earth mining. The video is about 4 minutes long.

Here is a bit from CNN about What are rare earths used for?

Rare earths are ubiquitous in the technologies we rely on every day, from smartphones to wind turbines to LED lights and flat-screen TVs. They’re also crucial for batteries in electric vehicles as well as MRI scanners and cancer treatments.

Rare earths are also essential for the US military. They’re used in F-35 fighter jets, submarines, lasers, satellites, Tomahawk missiles and more, according to a 2025 research note from CSIS.