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The Dystopian Lake Filled By the World's Tech Sludge

Posted by Soulskill on from the scifi-waiting-to-happen dept.

New submitter trevc sends this story from the BBC: Hidden in an unknown corner of Inner Mongolia is a toxic, nightmarish lake created by our thirst for smartphones, consumer gadgets and green tech. The city-sized Baogang Steel and Rare Earth complex dominates the horizon, its endless cooling towers and chimneys reaching up into grey, washed-out sky. Stretching into the distance, lies an artificial lake filled with a black, barely-liquid, toxic sludge. ... You may not have heard of Baotou, but the mines and factories here help to keep our modern lives ticking. It is one of the world’s biggest suppliers of “rare earth” minerals. These elements can be found in everything from magnets in wind turbines and electric car motors, to the electronic guts of smartphones and flatscreen TVs.

9 of 215 comments (clear)

  1. Objectivist utopia by Camel+Pilot · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sounds like an objectivist utopia

  2. Unnecessary, but profitable. by chihowa · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You may not have heard of Baotou, but the mines and factories here help to keep our modern lives ticking.

    We're able to produce most of what we use, including rare earth minerals, without creating toxic sludge lakes. The only reason we send all of these industries to China is to because their lax environmental and labor laws allow cheaper production, and thus higher profit margins.

    Our modern lives don't depend on utterly fucking up our environment, but ridiculous executive pay and concentration of wealth at the top benefit greatly from it. Studies (which I'm too lazy to look up, but I'm sure others can find easily) show that it doesn't cost that much more to make goods in the US and Europe, labor and environmental regulations and all. The outsourcing of manufacturing hasn't even significantly dropped retail prices much, though profit margins (and net profits) are at record highs across most industries.

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    If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
    1. Re:Unnecessary, but profitable. by zlives · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "I want my two dollars"
      and for that damn the species.

    2. Re:Unnecessary, but profitable. by Tailhook · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The operative word there is "was". That plant is gone now, moved to Asia in 2014. Also, it was an "assembly" plant; the major components were made in China, as you suspected.

      There were big claims made and lots of happy talk about 'merican jobs, herp derp. The cold reality is the plant is gone, the 'experiment' failed, and whatever statements about how it "wasn't cost considerations" is just so much corporate grifter B.S.

      The ability of the West to feather its environmental regulatory nest without multiplying the cost of manufactured goods depends entirely on evacuating the industrial base to unregulated third world Asian hell holes. That is reality. Don't like it? Feel free to substitute whatever fiction you like best, just like everyone else does.

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      Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
    3. Re:Unnecessary, but profitable. by jandrese · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Ultimately, lax environmental regulation is a big competitive advantage if you have an inherently dirty process.

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      I read the internet for the articles.
  3. Author Doesn't Understand mining by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The author makes a good point: we shouldn't be treating gadgets as disposable.

    Where the article fails is the implication (intentional or not) that "green" tech is creating some new problem that didn't exist before. Every hard rock mining operation no matter the purpose (INCLUDING some mining operations that extract oil from tar sands) produces toxic chemical laced by-products that must be dealt with (frequently by putting them in tailings ponds).

    1. Re:Author Doesn't Understand mining by SuricouRaven · · Score: 5, Insightful

      We've treated them as disposable in recent years because technology was advancing too rapidly to bother about building them to last. There's no point making a phone that can be repaired and maintaned for twenty years when next year's model will have twice the memory and three times the processing power, and a radio that moves bits twice as fast too. There may come a time when that will change.

  4. Re:Unintended consequences by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Republicans:
    1) abolish EPA
    2) Profit!!
    3) Giant lakes of goo

    Let us know when you start planning ahead

  5. Re:Their choice. by jythie · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The problem tends to be that the people who make the decisions get enough cash out of it to live elsewhere.