That yale.edu article needs additional context. It's verbatim repeating the PRC's talking points on the US-China trade dispute, the one over China's rare earth tariffs that was litigated before the WTO. The US position is that the export tariffs are a tactic to subsidize Chinese consumers of rare earths—their manufacturing sector—by giving them preferential prices for Chinese rare earths, the raw inputs. That's illegal under WTO rules. The PRC's position, what e360 is legitimizing (and amplifying), is that the West *morally deserves* to compensate China for the ecological costs of China's own mining industry, because we are its end consumers; and that these tariffs should be permitted under WTO rules as an environmental measure, not a protectionist one.

e.g.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_earths_trade_dispute

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-trade-idUSTRE6B...

https://ustr.gov/about-us/policy-offices/press-office/press-...

It's jarring to suddenly be reading CPC foreign policy talking points in a random environmental article!

Indeed,

The thing I'd want to add is that it's not technologically impossible to build a safe Lithium mine (or a safe nuclear power plant or a safe oil transportation infrastructure). It can be much more costly and so in these days of cost-cutting, unsafe operation is common. But one should still keep in mind safety isn't theoretically impossible.

Well sounds like something the people of Wyoming will love. They hate big bad government trying to tell them what to do. Let them drink the slurry.