Issued: December 2022
University Of Southampton
This report is part of module: HUMA2026-2223 DATA ENVIROMENTALISM
By Lily Melton 32964773
And discussed/critiqued by Matteus Labiak
Mining is a fundamental step in our technology epidemic. In 2020, 76 gigatons of minerals, ores, and fossil fuels entered our global economy to meet our societal needsi . Our nation relies on technology to communicate, inform, and for temporal efficiency, yet we forget the journey of production that it takes to be in our possession.
Mining is a technique that has been utilised for centuries but has grown exponentially with the rise of technology in the 21st century. In fact, an average citizen today uses ten times more minerals than a person in the 20th centuryii . Ethical production could not keep up with the hedonistic excitement of obtaining the latest products The abuse to our planet and the local environment where the mines are situated, and the long, unsafe hours of labourers have been extremely damaging to communities.
Mining is at the forefront of production, in the depths of supply chains. Technology companies avoid the responsibility of this pre-productive process that is so far down the chain, the blame for its amoral system is passed onto someone else. Yet, “the Big Five” technology companies employ these producers and supply the minerals for their products. Their voices hold the most influential political power and mute the people most affected by their actions.
This is a report about why action is imperative to confront the disparities of systems, specifically mining. And how a capitalistic focus is feeding our climate change and contributing to the demise of indigenous communities.
The extraction of natural resources has occurred over thousands of years, from steel armour to lithium-ion batteries. Trading of natural materials has always been an economic approach to feeding capitalism and the influx of this process that we see today arose in the Industrial Age – ‘the darling of the engineering world’iii
The harnessing of electricity is an example of misusing and overusing resources in the nineteenth century and prioritising profits over environmental necessities. The dried sap called ‘Gutta Percha’ was discovered in 1843 as a solution to insulating electrical wires and maintaining its underwater abilities. This material was soon utilised in large quantities and required 900,000 tree trunks for this productiv .
critical use of communication during World War Two, carrying out 70% of all morse code during these years vi . By 1880, the saturation of ‘Gutta Percha’ to meet our societal capitalistic norms led to its extinction. This is one example of our anthropogenic climate crisis. The extreme extraction of materials to remedy a technological moment in time.
PK Porthcurno, Our History, < https://pkporthcurno.com/discoverpk/our-story/>(accessed on 03/12/22)
Crawford, Kate, ‘Earth: Mining for AI’, Atlas of AI: power, politics, and the planetary costs of artificial intelligence, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022) p.26
Porthcurno Beach, exploited ‘Gutta Percha’ to create the largest submarine cable station in the worldv. It became a
From overground to underground, the 1800salsoexplored moreusagesofore. In fact, between 1850 and 1880 the number of miners rose from 200,000 to 500,000 and their output rose from 30 million tons in 1836 to 44 million in 1880vii The city of San Francisco grew from the wealth of pulling gold and silver out of California and Nevada lands. At the end of the Mexican-American war in 1848, those lands were stolen under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo when this knowledge of highly valuable goldfields became apparentviii This fight for ore caused thousands of families out of their
homes for miners to move in ix . Eventually, the land became uninhabitable from over-mining, waterways contaminated, and forests obliterated.
Youmay think this unethical approach to capitalisingonanationisancienthistory, however, mining still makes communities dilapidated. The development of commercialising gas resources in Central Province, Papua New Guinea in 2011 is organised by Exxon Mobil. This mining operation is described as ‘working with local communities to build infrastructure, develop social programmes and enhance skills and knowledge to improvethequalityoflifeforthepeople’x InOxfam’sreportofthelocalcommunity, they did not agree with this statement. Many discussed the divisions within the community, ‘Porebada and Boera villagers don do not mix well like they used to. The once-good relationship is broken. Children lost their friends from Boera because of the LNG Project’ xi . While working seven days a week in construction and general labour and having low salaries, many men have resorted to alcohol, to such an extent that many ‘Women don’t feel safe when walking past them’xii A community that
was once unified has now become strangers Not to mention the environmentalconcernsthatdisrupttheir culture, for example, the dust from constructionfallsontheirfarms,polluting the ground – their personal economy is belittled - and the overwhelming fear of their land being consumed by rising sea levelsbecauseof themines’unprotected gas tanksxiii . This Californian ideology façade of promising small communities better health, education, infrastructure, water supply, and sanitation without fulfilment is a prime example of imperialising third-world nations for firstworld economic gain. The ignorance of these events in data companies ‘supply chain is baked into capitalism’ as Crawford argued; the extremity of this matter is not equated in public discussion.
Mobil, PNG LNG, <https://www.pnglng.com/> (accessed on 07/12/22)
Mining has grown into a financial promise of national wealth and fails to take responsibility for its true costs: the struggle and deaths of miners, the detrimentaleffectsonourplanet,andthe loss of once-thriving communitiesxiv
One of Liz Truss’ first acts as Prime Minister, was lifting the fracking ban (the law was reinstated a month later) as a solution to our energy crisis. Fracking, also known as hydraulic fracturing, is ‘to liberate methane molecules from hard shales and many other rock types’xv. As a greenhouse gas, the process releases extremely harmful fuels that pollute our air and damage our health. The main reason it was banned in the UK, in November 2019, was due to the risk of uncontrollable earthquakesxvi. The most ironic point is that introducing fracking to resolve our current energy crisis is a falsification. The United Kingdom is governed by regional market pricing, meaning the gas produced will be soldto the highest bidder globally, notwithstanding, the process to commence fracking can take years, so it is not a solution for our short-term problemxvii
ion batteries in recent years has raised concerns about its environmental impact. The Jiajika mine, in China, is known as the biggest Lithiummine in the world, encouraging companies like Rongda to invest $510 million in the site in2020xviii InMay2016,protestorsthrew deadfishontothestreetsofTagong from the Liqi river, where the mine spilt hazardous chemicals into the waterxix
Cornelius, Chris, and Linder, Mark, The Guardian, Liz Truss, we support fracking too – that’s why we know it can’t work for Britain, (21 Sep 2022) < https://www.theguardian.com/c ommentisfree/2022/sep/21/liztruss-fracking-britain-economicpolitical-low-carbon-cuadrilla>
The economic purpose of mining is clear today. The addiction to utilising lithium-
The contaminated water did not only kill the fish but poisoned people who drank from it, who later died from cancer as a direct resultxx . It was reported that this was the third spillage to happen in seven years, also contaminating the surrounding soil The process also requires an extensive amount of water –500,000 gallons per tonne of lithium – in ‘Chile’s Salar de Atacama, mining activities consumed 65 per cent of the region’s water. That is having a big impact on local farmers – who grow quinoa and herd llamas – in an area where some communities already must
get waterdriven in fromelsewhere’xxi . All these disadvantageous effects on our planet for a battery with a short lifespan - approximately 4.7 yearsxxii .
A single mobile phone requires 75 elements to produce it xxiii We are relying on the use of lithium at an unsustainable rate, like ‘Gutta Percha’. One of The Big Five technology companies, Apple, says they are ‘recycling anddisposing of batteries with the utmost respect for the earth’ xxiv .
Whilst this is stated, in the Global Economy, only 8.6% of all materials are reusedxxv
GreenPeace, Fracking, < https://www.greenpeace.org.uk/c hallenges/fracking/>
Amit Katwala, Wired, The spiralling environmental cost of our lithium battery addiction, (2018), https://www.wired.co.uk/article/lit hium-batteries-environmentimpact
In pre-production the waste is extensive. For rare earth elements, one ton creates approximately 75 cubic meters of acidic wastewater and about one ton of radioactive waste residue is producedxxvi. This severely damages the land,whiledestroyingits biodiversityand vegetation, interrupting the cycle of our environment. David Abraham wrote that only 0.2% of mining clay for dysprosium and terbium contains these rare earth
elements and, therefore, 99.8% is discarded backintothe hills and streams creating new pollutants such as ammonium xxvii . In Baotou, there is an artificial lake of five and a half miles in diameter, containing 180 million tons of waste powder from ore processingxxviii. It istherunoffsfromTheBayonObomines which hold almost 70% of rare earth elements; the largest in the world xxix This black lake is a dystopic nightmare, full of intoxicating ore tailings and an overpowering smell of sulphur, only twenty minutes from the city centre of Inner Mongoliaxxx .
It is a vicious cycle; Marx’s dialectic of subject and object in economy demonstrates ‘a surplus of value for creating profits’xxxi . The large technology companies are showered in the positive attributes of mining -they sit at the top of the socio-economic hierarchy. The CEO of Apple, Tom Cook, has a net worth surpassing $1 billion while the company nears $2 trillionxxxii. This doesn’t equate to the Amnesty International researchon a cobalt (utilised in lithium batteries) mine where workers are paid the comparable of one US dollar per day ‘in conditions hazardous to life and health, and were often subjected to violence, extortion and intimidation… [with] children as young as 7 working in the mines’xxxiii There are layers of systemic
disparities that are often glossed over to meet the needs of first-world nations; consumers and owners. Moore’s law, the notion that the speed and capability of computers will double every two years, allowed ‘telecommunications and tech industry[ies] to exponentially increase chips’ performance and speed without corresponding increases’ to their waste xxxiv On Apple’s website, they explain their reasonings for utilising lithium-ion batteries in their products –they‘chargefaster,lastlonger,andhave a higher power density for more battery life in a light package’ xxxv which is ideal for the consumer but does not account for the labour and communal sacrifices behind this glamorise package.
The Royal Society, ‘Green Computing’ in Digital technology and the planet: Harnessing computing to achieve net zero, (December 2020), < https://royalsociety.org//media/policy/projects/digitaltechnology-and-theplanet/digital-technology-andthe-planet-report.pdf>
Lewis Mumford describes all the people behind the scenes of AI as a ‘megamachine’xxxvi . Physical labour to create the products in our hands is overlooked yet the products would not exist without it. Data companies’ ignorance of their supply chain is
concealedby‘third-partycontractorsand suppliers’xxxvii, to avoid the responsibility of environmental disasters like the lithium spill in Liqi River or the Black Lake in Baotou from mining. We need to start shifting the blame.
CEOs of data companiesmust take full responsibility forthemining operations that supply the minerals to produce their products, especially when it comes to direct environmental damage.
Who is to blame? When considering all the individual environmental damages as direct consequences of mining are often to supply minerals for the Big Five Technology Companies. It seems the blame is shifted to them post-production, but it is a necessity for the responsibility of pre-production to be placed on these organisations too. They hold the most influential power within the supply chain on decision-making, necessary for making policy changes in mining operations to result in less environmental damage.
Tech companies need to be held responsible forthe employee's health and safety as well as the local community. This begins with taking responsibility for excessive hours, child labour, sicknesses, and deaths.
There should be no difference in the fundamental rights of employees in mining in a thirdworld country to those sitting in an office in London. The loss of local communities like the small villages of Porebada and Boera is hidden behind the successes of the $19 billion operationxxxviii . This societal issue can impact the current and future generations of communities directly affected by the abuse of tech companies' neglect. They must strive to create a safer working environment for the labourers as well as the surrounding areas.
Recommendation 3
The UK Government must set an example of how to successfully manage a mining operation.
Tech companies would benefit from our government demonstrating an ethical and sustainable approach to mining over capitalistic desires. Such guidance should set out key questions in developing mining operations to have less environmental impact, for example, giving all employees the correct training and equipment to manage spillages in machinery (routine inspections) or controlling the flow of groundwater from spreading into nearby lakes.
Tech companies should promote the use of renewable energy for computing activities, for example, encouraging consumers to stream in Standard Definition than 4K or UHD to reduce carbon emissions between 1% and 5% in totalxxxix
i Howgego, Joshua, New Scientist, The End of Waste: The Grand Plan to Build a Truly Circular Economy, (9 Feb, 2022), https://www.newscientist.com/article/m g25332730-800-the-end-of-waste-thegrand-plan-to-build-a-truly-circulareconomy/. (accessed on 19/12/22)
ii Crawford, Kate, and Vladan Joler, Anatomy of an AI System: The Amazon Echo as an Anatomical Map of Human Labor, Data and Planetary Resources, 2018, p. 16.
iii Crawford, Kate, and Vladan Joler, Anatomy of an AI System: The Amazon Echo as an Anatomical Map of Human Labor, Data and Planetary Resources, 2018
iv Crawford, Kate, and Vladan Joler, Anatomy of an AI System: The Amazon Echo as an Anatomical Map of Human Labor, Data and Planetary Resources, 2018, p.12
v J. E. Packer, "Messages under the sea-the development of submarine cable telegraphy," Papers Presented at the Sixteenth I.E.E. Week-End Meeting on the History of Electrical Engineering, 1988, pp. 87-97.
vi PK Porthcurno, Our History, < https://pkporthcurno.com/discoverpk/our-story/>(accessed on 03/12/22)
vii vii Liza Picard, British Library, The rise of technology and industry, Victorian Britain, (14 Oct, 2009)
<https://www.bl.uk/victorianbritain/articles/the-rise-of-technologyand-industry> (accessed 8/12/22)
viii Crawford, Kate, ‘Earth: Mining for AI’, Atlas of AI: power, politics, and the planetary costs of artificial intelligence, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022) p.26
ix Crawford, Kate, ‘Earth: Mining for AI’, Atlas of AI: power, politics, and the planetary costs of artificial intelligence, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022) p.26
x Exxon Mobil, PNG LNG, <https://www.pnglng.com/> (accessed on 07/12/22)
xi
Oxfam Australia, Listening to the Impacts of the PNG LNG Project, (Nov 2011), p.18
xii
Oxfam Australia, Listening to the Impacts of the PNG LNG Project, (Nov 2011), p.16
xiii
Oxfam Australia, Listening to the Impacts of the PNG LNG Project, (Nov 2011), p.17
xiv Crawford, Kate, ‘Earth: Mining for AI’, Atlas of AI: power, politics, and the planetary costs of artificial intelligence, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022)
xv Cornelius, Chris, and Linder, Mark, The Guardian, Liz Truss, we support fracking too – that’s why we know it can’t work for Britain, (21 Sep 2022) < https://www.theguardian.com/commenti sfree/2022/sep/21/liz-truss-fracking-
britain-economic-political-low-carboncuadrilla>
xvi GreenPeace, Fracking, < https://www.greenpeace.org.uk/challen ges/fracking/> (accessed on 11/12/22) xvii GreenPeace, Fracking, < https://www.greenpeace.org.uk/challen ges/fracking/> (accessed on 11/12/22) xviii Denyer, Simon, The Washington Post, Tibetans in anguish as Chinese mines pollute their sacred grasslands, (Dec 26, 2016) < https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/ asia_pacific/tibetans-in-anguish-aschinese-mines-pollute-their-sacredgrasslands/2016/12/25/bb6aad0663bc-11e6-b4d833e931b5a26d_story.html> (accessed on 22/12/22)
xix Amit Katwala, Wired, The spiralling environmental cost of our lithium battery addiction, (2018), https://www.wired.co.uk/article/lithiumbatteries-environment-impact (accessed on 12/12/22)
xx Denyer, Simon, The Washington Post, Tibetans in anguish as Chinese mines pollute their sacred grasslands, (Dec 26, 2016) < https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/ asia_pacific/tibetans-in-anguish-aschinese-mines-pollute-their-sacredgrasslands/2016/12/25/bb6aad0663bc-11e6-b4d833e931b5a26d_story.html> (accessed on 22/12/22)
xxi Amit Katwala, Wired, The spiralling environmental cost of our lithium battery addiction, (2018), https://www.wired.co.uk/article/lithiumbatteries-environment-impact (accessed on 12/12/22)
xxii Crawford, Kate, and Vladan Joler, Anatomy of an AI System: The Amazon Echo as an Anatomical Map of Human Labor, Data and Planetary Resources, 2018, p.6
xxiii Crawford, Kate, and Vladan Joler, Anatomy of an AI System: The Amazon Echo as an Anatomical Map of Human Labor, Data and Planetary Resources, 2018, p. 16
xxiv Apple, Battery Service and Recycling, https://www.apple.com/uk/batteries/ser vice-and-recycling/ (accessed on 12/12/22)
xxv Howgego, Joshua, New Scientist, The End of Waste: The Grand Plan to Build a Truly Circular Economy, (9 Feb, 2022), https://www.newscientist.com/article/m g25332730-800-the-end-of-waste-thegrand-plan-to-build-a-truly-circulareconomy/. (accessed on 19/12/22)
xxvi Crawford, Kate, and Vladan Joler, Anatomy of an AI System: The Amazon Echo as an Anatomical Map of Human Labor, Data and Planetary Resources, 2018, p.16
xxvii Crawford, Kate, and Vladan Joler, Anatomy of an AI System: The Amazon Echo as an Anatomical Map of Human Labor, Data and Planetary Resources, 2018, p.10 xxviii Liu, ‘Chinese Mining Dump’ xxix Crawford, Kate, and Vladan Joler, Anatomy of an AI System: The Amazon Echo as an Anatomical Map of Human Labor, Data and Planetary Resources, 2018, p.15
xxx BBC, Tim Maughan, The dystopian lake filled by the world’s tech lust, (2nd April, 2015) < https://www.bbc.com/future/article/2015 0402-the-worst-place-on-earth> (accessed 20/12/22)
xxxi Crawford, Kate, and Vladan Joler, Anatomy of an AI System: The Amazon Echo as an Anatomical Map of Human Labor, Data and Planetary Resources, 2018, p.7 xxxii Melin, Anders, and Metcalf, Tom, Bloomberg UK, Tim Cook Hits
Billionaire Status with Apple Nearing $2 Trillion, (10 August, 2020) < https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articl es/2020-08-10/apple-s-cook-becomesbillionaire-via-the-less-traveled-ceoroute?leadSource=uverify%20wall> (accessed on 11/12/22)
xxxiii Crawford, Kate, and Vladan Joler, Anatomy of an AI System: The Amazon Echo as an Anatomical Map of Human Labor, Data and Planetary Resources, 2018, p.7
xxxiv The Royal Society, ‘Green Computing’ in Digital technology and the planet: Harnessing computing to achieve net zero, (December 2020), < https://royalsociety.org//media/policy/projects/digitaltechnology-and-the-planet/digitaltechnology-and-the-planet-report.pdf> (accessed on 19/12/22)
xxxv
Apple, Why Lithium-ion?, < https://www.apple.com/uk/batteries/wh y-lithium-ion/> (accessed on 11/12/22)
xxxvi Mumford, Lewis, Myth of the Machine: The Pentagon of Power, (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970)
xxxvii Crawford, Kate, ‘Earth: Mining for AI’, Atlas of AI: power, politics, and the planetary costs of artificial intelligence, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022) p.14
xxxviii PNG LNG, ExxonMbil, About, < https://www.pnglng.com/About> (accessed on 22/12/22)
xxxix
The Royal Society, ‘Green Computing’ in Digital technology and the planet: Harnessing computing to achieve net zero, (December 2020), < https://royalsociety.org//media/policy/projects/digitaltechnology-and-the-planet/digitaltechnology-and-the-planet-report.pdf> (accessed on 19/12/22) p.75