Hello world. I’m Tomasino.
This is Solarpunk Prompts, a series for writers where we discuss Solarpunk, a movement that imagines a world where technology is used for the good of the planet.
In this series we spend each episode exploring a single Solarpunk story prompt adding some commentary, some inspirations, and some considerations.
Most importantly, we consider how that story might help us to better envision a sustainable civilization.
If this is your first time here, I’d recommend checking out our introduction episode first, where we talk about what Solarpunk is, why you should care, and why this series came into being.
Today’s prompt is: “The Miners”
A powerful co-op of rare earth miners, who long ago fought their owners and won, now face a new challenge: how to avoid becoming like them, knowing that without their work very few people will be able to produce electronics.
What are rare earth metals? Despite the name, rare earth metals aren’t actually, well, rare. There’s no scarcity of the materials. In fact, the rarest of these 17 metals is still over 125 times more common than gold. They can also be found all over the globe, not just in one limited region. Instead, the name is given to them because they don’t appear in high concentrations. You won’t find a vein of neodymium. The scant quantities we mine need to be refined again and again through many processes. Some of these use corrosive chemicals or even radioactive materials. According to some accounts, “processing one ton of rare earth metals produces about 2,000 tons of toxic waste.”
Sadly, they are absolutely necessary for modern electronics, and so much more, like electric vehicle motors, wind turbines, cell phones, or batteries. And they’re essential to the production of fiber optics, LEDs, and even polishing glass. The need is growing constantly, and the economics are astounding. Europium is perhaps the most expensive of the lanthanide series (those are the elements numbered 57 to 71 on the periodic table, right near the bottom). Europium has been fluctuating in price over the last few years between about $250,000 to $800,000 per metric ton.
There are currently fewer than 20 active rare earth mine locations in the world. And though many more have been identified and are being investigated, according to an article in sciencenews, "the vast majority — between 80 and 90 percent — of rare earth elements on the market since the 1990s have come from China.
“One site alone, the massive Bayan Obo mine in Inner Mongolia, accounted for 45 percent of rare earth production in 2019 …It is also one of the most heavily polluted places on Earth.”
How might we see a movement towards stability enter this space? We could imagine it starting in the usual ways, reduce, reuse, recycle. One of the largest sources of these metals is our own landfills. Investigations have begun to find ways we might tap into these waste materials and recover some of what we need. Many of these techniques are as polluting as much as mining. But new research and technology is beginning to change that. Copper salts, specific bio-organisms and bacteria, and other novel ideas offer hope that we can reclaim these metals without additional harm to our world.
Ikenna Nlebedim, a materials scientist at the US Department of Energy’s Critical Materials Institute, says recycling is “going to play a very important and central role… [Within] 10 years recycling could meet up to one fourth of the need for rare earths."
It’s an impressive figure, but what about the other 75%? How can we envision a better, more sustainable, rare earth mining future? Perhaps our Solarpunk vision of community action can play a role.
Researchers at the University of Minho, in Portugal, turned their focus to a collection of mining co-ops in Brazil, each a small boutique operation, to see if there were lessons to be learned. Their research rated each operation against the International Cooperative Alliance’s Statement on the Cooperative identity, seven guidelines, or principles, used as the standard benchmark for measuring these organizations for over 120 years.
The results included two big takeaways:
First, from the interviews, the majority of the participating co-operatives were not aware of what sustainability means, and only showed concern for economic and social issues, not environmental ones.
And second, “the need to improve knowledge and academic background of both diggers and managers emerged as a major challenge to be overcome”
What’s wonderful about these results is that it showed small-scale mining is achievable. It also revealed the gaps we need to address to fully realize these cooperative visions in a sustainable way. For those of us interested in Solarpunk, whether writers or activists, that’s an action plan.
Education in sustainability. Education into cooperative identity. Much like education into Solarpunk itself we need to provide a framework of understanding so that people can know what’s possible and what’s desirable.
Let’s turn back to our prompt:
A powerful co-op of rare earth miners, who long ago fought their owners and won, now face a new challenge: how to avoid becoming like them, knowing that without their work very few people will be able to produce electronics.
How does this setting, and the topic of rare earth metal mining, provide us story opportunities? Regardless of whether our story communities have solved the environmental and sociological issues, the reader will always have some of today’s context in their mind. The exploitation of miners, the destruction of communities, the ravaging of landscapes, the poisoning of rivers, it’s all a backdrop whether spelled out or not. So how can we leverage that context to make a better story, one that helps us envision that future progress, and maybe teaches us something along the way?
In this season’s introduction episode I spoke about the possible phases of Solarpunk eras: the pre, the post, and so on. Is your story better situated at the very beginning, where a co-op has just fought their way into existence, and where the whole world is filled with antagonists? Perhaps you can spotlight these early steps getting us from today to tomorrow, more sustainable by the day.
Or has the revolution ended? Are we living the sustainable future? Is the community worried about repeating the mistakes of the past? There are opportunities in both types of narratives.
But what other paths could we go down?
Rather than focus on the mining, is the cooperative initiative interesting enough on its own? These communities are creating themselves in real time. As research showed in Brazil, they may have gaps they need to fill. Where is their education coming from, for the diggers or for the managers? How are they learning about how their own society should work? How are they passing on the knowledge of sustainability and its importance?
Is there still commerce at play? These miners are doing the job for a reason. The goods are needed. Is there a business interest, money for a growing colony, creating schools? How do these needs impact the community’s desires to do better, be better, and stay in balance with their environment? How do they keep this relationship healthy?
Or is this a step further along the political and economic spectrum? Is your story exploring anarchism? Murray Bookchin’s ideas of social ecology might be helpful to explore how ecological and social issues entwine.
Where will your tension come from? The mining, the cooperative, other stakeholders? Are there ecologists involved in some way beyond the miners who are worried about the impact? What about groups desperate to get the metals they need to survive? Do their needs exceed what can be done safely? In harmony with nature? Is there an ethical question to be asked?
Finally, lets consider the scope of perspectives. What are the needs and realities for a miner? What are the needs and realities for a mining co-op. What about for the region? Are there other communities? Perhaps your mining community gets their food from another group. How do these macro-level relationships affect the smaller, daily lives in your story?
How will these lives teach us to live better ourselves?
Until next time, I’m Tomasino. I hope you’ll join me for the next Solarpunk Prompt.
Music in this episode is: Golden, and Kelp Grooves, by Little Glass Men (CC BY)