Save the planet! Poison China

China no longer feels it needs to poison itself to please Western greens:

Rare earth metals are key to global efforts to switch to cleaner energy—from batteries in hybrid cars to magnets in wind turbines. Mining and processing the metals causes environmental damage that China, the biggest producer, is no longer willing to bear.

China's rare earth industry each year produces more than five times the amount of waste gas, including deadly fluorine and sulfur dioxide, than the total flared annually by all miners and oil refiners in the U.S. Alongside that 13 billion cubic meters of gas is 25 million tons of wastewater laced with cancer-causing heavy metals such as cadmium, Xu Xu, chairman of the China Chamber of Commerce of Metals, Minerals & Chemicals Importers & Exporters, said at a Beijing conference on Dec. 28.

"China supplied the world with very cheap and good-quality rare earths for more than a decade at the cost of depleting its resources and damaging its environment," Wang Caifeng, who heads the government-affiliated China Association for Rare Earths, said at the conference. "The world should thank China."

With China now shutting down unregulated rare earth mines and slashing exports, users from Toyota Motor Corp. to Vestas Wind Systems A/S, the world's biggest maker of wind turbines, are concerned that supplies may be constrained. China provides more than 95 percent of global shipments of the 17 rare earth metals, also used in mobile phones, catalysts to reduce automobile exhaust emissions and energy-saving electronics.

(Thanks to reader Mike.)