Tantallum

Tantallum is a rare earth mineral used in high tech metals, including some bicycle frames and almost all mobile devices. There are reserves of it under African rainforests. The loggers who destroy these forests and the miners who extract the tantallum are often fed by killing animals including elephants and chimpanzees. This implicates cell phone or high tech bicycle buyer may be contributing to w:deforestation and w:great ape genocide.

The impact of tantallum extraction is useful as an example of why comprehensive outcome matters, and why release of non-modular non-reusable technology by mobile device vendors (which also leads to e-waste) must be reduced. This is a priority of healthy signal infrastructure.

Because this is an issue both in the infrastructure and as an example of the far-ranging impacts of extraction and production activities, it is a useful thing to contemplate in best case and worst case analysis. That is, if Consumerium Services were so popular as to encourage everyone to get new high-tech devices, that might increase tantallum ore extraction and do harm.