LATIN AMERICA’S ENVIRONMENTAL POLICIES IN GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE - Mining Our Way Out of the Climate Change Conundrum?

The ability of China to control the majority tors, governments and industry experts are facing of both REE supply and reserves can be explained a growing awareness that the production of micro- by two key factors—(1) the willingness of China to chips, processors, and other smart technologies will absorb the environmental externalities and adverse face further supply constraints as the number of so. [...] Figure 125 extraction and processing; and (2) the capacity of Chi- The vulnerability/risk perspective skews the global nese firms to lower the price of REEs to outcompete debate on the green transition. [...] However, the assembly of inputs for high-tech- varying policy orientations across the continent, the nology sectors is predominantly occupied by China, majority of elites and social forces consider future the European Union, the United States, and the rest economic growth to be based on the extraction of of Asia. [...] and externalities of the transition from the national The ability to address vulnerabilities and risks on the government and urban China to rural China, Latin supply side would benefit from increased funding for America, and other resource-rich regions, making research in materials engineering and environmen- them even more vulnerable to the negative effects of tal and geological sciences. [...] A “critical mineral” is defined as “a mineral identified by the Secretary of the Interior to be (1) a nonfuel mineral or mineral material essential to the economic and national security of the United States, (2) the supply chain of which is vulnerable to disruption, and (3) that serves an essential function in the manufacturing of a product, the absence of which would have significant consequences.