New Hampshire resoundingly rejected the two major party’s mainstream candidates in its presidential primary Tuesday, with Bernie Sanders decisively beating Hillary Clinton on the Democratic ticket and Donald Trump overwhelming a pack of governors and U.S. senators who cannot seem to stop him.
Sanders’ 21-point victory over Clinton, though not unexpected after surging in recent polls, was a monumental achievement for a candidate who started out with less than 5 percent of the vote (trailing by 44 percent at one point last year) and calling for a revolution to fundamentally address economic and political inequality.
“We won because we harnessed the energy and the excitement that the Democratic Party will need to succeed in November,” Sanders said. “What the people here have said is that given the enormous crises facing our country, it is just too late for the same old, same old establishment politics and establishment economics: the people want real change.”
“What the American people are saying,” he continued—“and by the way, I hear this not just from progressives, but from conservatives and from moderates—is that we can no longer continue to have a campaign finance system in which Wall Street and the billionaire class are allowed to buy elections. Americans, no matter what their political view may be, understand that that is not what democracy is about. That is what oligarchy is about!”
But Sanders was not the only candidate striking populist notes. In her concession speech, Clinton spoke passionately about tackling much the same agenda as Sanders—not just economic and social justice, but taking on Wall Street and campaign finance reform.
“People have every right to be angry,” Clinton said, “but they’re also hungry—they’re hungry for solutions. What are we going to do? And that is the fight that we are taking to the country. What is the best way to change people’s lives, so we can all grow together? Who is the best changemaker? And here’s what I promise: I will work harder than anyone to actually make the changes that make your lives better."
That question, who is the best change agent, will surely be a centerpiece of Clinton’s campaign as she moves on to the next states. But she also sounded different, not talking about fine-print solutions but speaking emotionally while saying she knows how best to take on Republicans.
“In this campaign, you’ve heard a lot about Washington and about Wall Street,” she said. “Now Sen. Sanders and I both want to get secret, unaccountable money out of politics. And let’s remember, Citizens United, one of the worst Supreme Court decisions in our country’s history, was actually a case about about a right-wing attack on me and my campaign … So yes, you’re not going to find anybody more committed to aggressive campaign reform than me.”
Whether Clinton and her team will seriously embrace the core economic message that the Sanders campaign has been riding on—inequality, health care and reining in Wall Street—remains to be seen. Clinton also acknowledged in her speech that she is not winning among the vast majority of younger voters, who are drawn to Sanders and said she would try to win their support. And early in Sanders' victory speech, he signaled the possibility he might come up short in the nomination contest, saying it was critical that all Democrats were united in the fall, “because the right-wing Republicans we oppose must not be allowed to regain the presidency.”
Republican Quagmire Deepens
Trump’s victory was also not surprising given his months-long lead in the polls. But after placing second after Ted Cruz in ultra-religious Iowa, Trump won across all Republican demographics in the media’s New Hampshire exit polls, including among more highly educated voters, one of the demographics Trump wasn't supposed to win. Even though he won with 35 percent of the vote, that shows his base of support is widening, which is more than disconcerting to the GOP’s Washington-based establishment.
Traditionally, outsider candidates split a small slice of a party’s electorate and remain in the single digits while a more mainstream presidential candidate draws increasing support as the nominating season unfolds. But exactly the opposite is happening in 2016 for the Republicans, as their pack of governors and U.S. senators hover in the teens or less, percentage-wise and will soon have to decide if they will stay in the race.
As it stands, the GOP frontrunners are the party’s outsiders, Trump and Ted Cruz, who won Iowa’s caucuses. The second-place New Hampshire winner, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, roughly garnered one in six votes, 16 percent, which will boost his campaign as the next contests appear in Nevada and South Carolina. Kasich raised a fraction of the other establishment candidates, but rose in the polls on a very positive message and an impressive TV debate performance. Cruz, Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio gathered 11.5 percent, 11.2 percent and 10.4 percent, respectively, with about three-quarters of precincts reporting.
Trump’s victory speech also struck populist notes, but of a decisively right-wing nature except for his attack on the money, power and influence of special-interest lobbyists. But that didn’t stop Trump from going after Sanders, after congratulating him on his victory.
“First of all, congratulations to Bernie; in all fairness, we have to congratulate him,” he said. “We may not like it. But I heard part of Bernie’s speech. He wants to give away our country, folks. He wants to give away—we’re not going to let it happen. We’re not going to let it happen. I don’t know where it’s going with Bernie. We wish him a lot of luck.”
“But we are going to make America great again,” he continued, “but we are going to do it the old-fashioned way. We’re going to beat China, Japan. We’re going to beat Mexico in trade. We’re going to beat all of these countries that are taking so much of our money away from us on a daily basis. It’s not going to happen anymore.”
Then Trump congratulated himself for not relying on fundraising from wealthy donors and lobbyists, saying, much like Sanders and Clinton, that those fixtures of the political culture are inherently corrupt and anti-democratic.
“I think one of the things that really caught on—it’s very important—self-funding my campaign,” he said. “This is on both sides, the Republican side, the Democratic side, money pouring into [negative] commercials. These are special interests, folks. These are lobbyists. There are people that don’t necessarily love our country. They don’t have the best interests of our country at heart. We’re not going to let it happen. We have to do something about it.”
Sanders doesn’t have a super PAC, which would allow donors to flout legal loopholes to get around individual campaign contribution caps and give millions. He said he has more than 1 million donors who have given 3.7 million times, averaging $27.
As the race continues to its next stage, the candidates’ focuses will all shift to demonstrate that they have broad support that can translate into a winning candidacy in the fall. On the Democratic side, Sanders will try to demonstrate that a U.S. senator from a nearly all-white state can win sizeable votes from African Americans in South Carolina and Latinos in Nevada. In contrast, Clinton will try to demonstrate that those slices of the party’s base that have historically supported her in the past are still with her. All eyes will be on turnout.
On the Republican side, the contest gets trickier. In South Carolina, there’s a sizeable evangelical population that’s akin to Iowa, which appears to favor Ted Cruz. And in Nevada, Trump, whose fortune comes in part from the casino business, is a well-known figure, especially in Las Vegas.
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Though made in large part of plastic, glass, ceramics, gold and copper, they also contain critical resources. The gallium used for LEDs and the camera flash, the tantalum in capacitors and indium that powers the display were all pulled from the ground — at a price for nature and people.
"Mining raw materials is always problematic, both with regard to human rights and ecology," said Melanie Müller, raw materials expert of the German think tank SWP. "Their production process is pretty toxic."
The gallium and indium in many phones comes from China or South Korea, the tantalum from the Democratic Republic of Congo or Rwanda. All in, such materials comprise less than ten grams of a phone's weight. But these grams finance an international mining industry that causes radioactive earth dumps, poisoned groundwater and Indigenous population displacement.
Environmental Damage: 'Nature Has Been Overexploited'
The problem is that modern technologies don't work without what are known as critical raw materials. Collectively, solar panels, drones, 3D printers and smartphone contain as many as 30 of these different elements sourced from around the globe. A prime example is lithium from Chile, which is essential in the manufacture of batteries for electric vehicles.
"No one, not even within the industry, would deny that mining lithium causes enormous environmental damage," Müller explained, in reference to the artificial lakes companies create when flushing the metal out of underground brine reservoirs. "The process uses vast amounts of water, so you end up with these huge flooded areas where the lithium settles."
This means of extraction results in the destruction and contamination of the natural water system. Unique plants and animals lose access to groundwater and watering holes. There have also been reports of freshwater becoming salinated due to extensive acidic waste water during lithium mining.
But lithium is not the only raw material that causes damage. Securing just one ton of rare earth elements produces 2,000 tons of toxic waste, and has devastated large regions of China, said Günther Hilpert, head of the Asia Research Division of the German think tank SWP.
He says companies there have adopted a process of spraying acid over the mining areas in order to separate the rare earths from other ores, and that mined areas are often abandoned after excavation.
"They are no longer viable for agricultural use," Hilpert said. "Nature has been overexploited."
China is not the only country with low environmental mining standards and poor resource governance. In Madagascar, for example, a thriving illegal gem and metal mining sector has been linked to rainforest depletion and destruction of natural lemur habitats.
States like Madagascar, Rwanda and the DRC score poorly on the Environmental Performance Index that ranks 180 countries for their effort on factors including conservation, air quality, waste management and emissions. Environmentalists are therefore particularly concerned that these countries are mining highly toxic materials like beryllium, tantalum and cobalt.
But it is not only nature that suffers from the extraction of high-demand critical raw materials.
"It is a dirty, toxic, partly radioactive industry," Hilpert said. "China, for example, has never really cared about human rights when it comes to achieving production targets."
Dirty, Toxic, Radioactive: Working in the Mining Sector
One of the most extreme examples is Baotou, a Chinese city in Inner Mongolia, where rare earth mining poisoned surrounding farms and nearby villages, causing thousands of people to leave the area.
In 2012, The Guardian described a toxic lake created in conjunction with rare earth mining as "a murky expanse of water, in which no fish or algae can survive. The shore is coated with a black crust, so thick you can walk on it. Into this huge, 10 sq km tailings pond nearby factories discharge water loaded with chemicals used to process the 17 most sought after minerals in the world."
Local residents reported health issues including aching legs, diabetes, osteoporosis and chest problems, The Guardian wrote.
South Africa has also been held up for turning a blind eye to the health impacts of mining.
"The platinum sector in South Africa has been criticized for performing very poorly on human rights — even within the raw materials sector," Müller said.
In 2012, security forces killed 34 miners who had been protesting poor working conditions and low wages at a mine owned by the British company Lonmin. What became known as the "Marikana massacre" triggered several spontaneous strikes across the country's mining sector.
Müller says miners can still face exposure to acid drainage — a frequent byproduct of platinum mining — that can cause chemical burns and severe lung damage. Though this can be prevented by a careful waste system.
Some progress was made in 2016 when the South African government announced plans to make mining companies pay $800 million (€679 million) for recycling acid mine water. But they didn't all comply. In 2020, activists sued Australian-owned mining company Mintails and the government to cover the cost of environmental cleanup.
Another massive issue around mining is water consumption. Since the extraction of critical raw materials is very water intensive, drought prone countries such as South Africa, have witnessed an increase in conflicts over supply.
For years, industry, government and the South African public debated – without a clear agreement – whether companies should get privileged access to water and how much the population may suffer from shortages.
Mining in Brazil: Replacing Nature, People, Land Rights
Beyond the direct health and environmental impact of mining toxic substances, quarrying critical raw materials destroys livelihoods, as developments in Brazil demonstrate.
"Brazil is the major worldwide niobium producer and reserves in [the state of] Minas Gerais would last more than 200 years [at the current rate of demand]," said Juliana Siqueira-Gay, environmental engineer and Ph.D. student at the University of São Paulo.
While the overall number of niobium mining requests is stagnating, the share of claims for Indigenous land has skyrocketed from 3 to 36 percent within one year. If granted, 23 percent of the Amazon forest and the homeland of 222 Indigenous groups could fall victim to deforestation in the name of mining, a study by Siqueira-Gay finds.
In early 2020, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro signed a bill which would allow corporations to develop areas populated by Indigenous communities in the future. The law has not yet entered into force, but "this policy could have long-lasting negative effects on Brazil's socio-biodiversity," said Siqueira-Gay.
One example are the niobium reserves in Seis Lagos, in Brazil's northeast, which could be quarried to build electrolytic capacitors for smartphones.
"They overlap the Balaio Indigenous land and it would cause major impacts in Indigenous communities by clearing forests responsible for providing food, raw materials and regulating the local climate," Siqueira-Gay explained.
She says scientific good practice guidelines offer a blueprint for sustainable mining that adheres to human rights and protects forests. Quarries in South America — and especially Brazil — funded by multilaterial banks like the International Finance Corporation of the World Bank Group have to follow these guidelines, Siqueira-Gay said.
They force companies to develop sustainable water supply, minimize acid exposure and re-vegetate mined surfaces. "First, negative impacts must be avoided, then minimized and at last compensated — not the other way around."
Reposted with permission from DW.