Environmental Damage – Law Street

Weaponized Oil: Scorched Earth Warfare in Iraq

Jillian Sequeira — Mon, 12 Dec 2016 01:01:23 +0000

Image courtesy of wongaboo; License: (CC BY 2.0)

The military tactic of “scorched earth”–destroying land and resources while entering or retreating from a territory so that enemies cannot benefit from occupying the land–dates back to ancient history. But most of us associate it either with the Napoleonic wars or the World Wars, when both Russia and Germany destroyed infrastructure and land to slow the advance of their enemy. And in Iraq, as ISIS fights to control Mosul, the scorched earth tactic is alive and well–during its retreat, ISIS has been regularly lighting oil wells on fire, hoping to slow the government forces advancing on it.

The town of Qayyarah, south of Mosul, has been burning for months, the peril escalated by ISIS igniting the Mishraq sulfur plant outside of the town in October. A sulfur cloud stretches out over the town and crude oil runs through the streets, forcing the evacuation of local families.

It can take weeks to put out just a single fire, as the firefighters have to check the land around the well for booby traps and landmines before beginning their work. The toxic smoke that the firefighters inhale makes the work almost unbearable and despite their best efforts, there are still over a dozen wells burning night and day. Even after the fire has been extinguished, the damage is not yet done. Entire villages are stained with soot and smoke inhalation is already damaging the lungs of the populace, as hundreds are being rushed to hospitals. The sky is dark for most of the day and livestock are dying at an escalated rate under the pressure of constant exposure to smoke and soot.

The burning of the oil wells will have a lasting, devastating impact on the landscape–not just in terms of environmental damage but regarding human security–an entire generation of children growing up with lung damage. NASA satellite images provide a grim portrait of how quickly the smoke and sulfur-dioxide released by the fires has spread and raise questions about when the land will be inhabitable again.

It is fitting that ISIS, with its medieval vision of law and order, would revive a violent tactic that should have died out before the turn of the century. ISIS’ burning of the oil wells is not the only way that ISIS is manipulating natural resources. ISIS has also cut electricity to water stations in neighborhoods where Iraqi troops are arriving, leaving approximately half a million people without access to running water or clean drinking water. The lack of drinking water would have been a critical problem even without the fires, but with citizens choking on the smoke, the need for drinkable water is greater than ever before. ISIS is leaving nothing but husks of infrastructure in its wake, forcing civilians to cooperate with it in order to survive–following the terrorists to cities with clean air and water rather than staying put and waiting for Iraqi troops to arrive under the clouds of sulfur.

Jillian Sequeira

Jillian Sequeira was a member of the College of William and Mary Class of 2016, with a double major in Government and Italian. When she’s not blogging, she’s photographing graffiti around the world and worshiping at the altar of Elon Musk and all things Tesla. Contact Jillian at Staff@LawStreetMedia.com

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What’s the Best Way to Transport Crude Oil?

Kyle Downey — Sun, 15 May 2016 13:00:26 +0000

"Pipeline on rails, Trempealeau WI" courtesy of [Roy Luck via Flickr]

In the past 20 years, fuel has been the fastest growing export in the world, both in terms of volume and value. Oil makes up a huge portion of these fuel exports and is also the primary energy source for transportation throughout the world. Currently, the only alternatives to oil for the transportation sector are electric and hydrogen cell powered cars. Both of these are comparatively very small industries and only act as energy alternatives to on-road vehicles, while the transportation sector also includes all the world’s ships, planes, and military vehicles, which are all heavily dependent upon petroleum. As of now, oil is here to stay on planet earth, whatever its consequences may be.

Oil production in the United States has changed a lot in recent years. Following the discovery of the Bakken Shale formation in North Dakota and Montana, the United States increased its domestic production dramatically. The Bakken formation combined with the Eagle Ford and Permian Basins located in Texas allowed the U.S. to produce 66 percent of its oil domestically in 2014. The discovery of the Bakken Shale was hailed by some as an incredible discovery that will allow the United States newfound energy independence. But an equal number of people have objected furiously to our exploitation of the shale patch, claiming that it only further solidifies the United States on a path toward fossil fuel dependence. Our domestic production has decreased somewhat in the last two years as oil prices have dropped abroad, but overall our production rates are higher than they have been in a very long time and there is a considerable push to continue strengthening the industry domestically.

Now that a greater quantity of oil is being produced on the U.S. mainland than before, the amount of oil being shipped via tanker to the United States has dropped dramatically, which means that globally the risk of ocean oil spills has decreased as well. However, transporting oil domestically poses its own environmental problems and even imported oil often needs to be shipped to different parts of the country by land transport. If oil spills on the mainland, it can destroy ecosystems and watersheds and render communities unstable. If oil catches fire, it can lead to gigantic explosions, a few of which have historically had terrible consequences for American towns. Read on to learn about the pros and cons of different methods of oil transportation and the policy fights involved.

Rail

Currently, the most common method of oil transport is by railway. Truck transport of oil now only accounts for 4 percent of all petroleum moved because of its high level of inefficiency and risk. While pipelines can often be more efficient modes of transport, their construction can lead to political battles. The advantage of rail transport is that the infrastructure is already in place and already spans across America–all it needs is to be re-utilized.

Many railroads owners are willing to sign contracts with crude oil companies that allow for their railways to be used for transporting oil. Often these contracts are short term and many railway owners reserve the ability to withdraw from the business relationship later down the road. The railway transport business has grown exponentially along with the upward spike in oil extraction. Only 9,500 carloads of oil were moved on freight lines in 2008; by 2013 435,560 carloads of oil were moved, equivalent to 300 million barrels of oil.

“Crude Oil Storage on Stilts” courtesy of Anthony via Flickr

However, this increase in railway transport has led to an increase in the risk of oil-related disasters. When a train transporting oil (also known as a “bomb train”) runs into a problem, it generally causes the oil to ignite, which results in an explosion. These explosions can be gigantic in size and result in large scale destruction. While railway movement is considerably safer than trucks in terms of land transportation, a single incident can have disastrous effects. This is further compounded by some evidence suggesting that Bakken shale produces a more flammable crude oil because of its specific mineral content. Because of North Dakota’s location in the very center of America, these bomb trains have to span incredible distances to move oil to the coasts of the country, which increases the risk that something may go wrong. Between 2013 and 2015 more than 10 major explosions took place in America.

The explosions can have devastating immediate effects, but oil leakage also poses its own risk. In 2013 alone more than 1.15 million gallons of oil were spilled. Oil leaks can take a considerable amount of time to clean up and the damage can happen very quickly. Oil is mostly made up of a combination of thousands of different hydrocarbons and is generally toxic to almost every living creature. Crude oil, in particular, is oil in its least processed form and poses a greater risk than refined petroleum to an area it enters and contaminates. Because of this, an oil spill can cause tremendous damage to an ecosystem. Furthermore, an oil spill in the ocean will eventually go away, partially through evaporation and partially through breaking down and falling to the ocean floor as an inert tar. However, if oil enters freshwater it can permanently render it undrinkable, which can be particularly serious in areas where humans live nearby and rely on freshwater for drinking water.

Pipeline Alternatives and the Keystone XL Expansion

Right now Canada is the largest U.S. supplier of foreign oil, which offers a certain level of ease of transport because the two countries are on the same landmass. Currently, 70 percent of petroleum products in Canada and the United States are shipped via pipeline. A certain amount of crude oil can be moved over the border on the Canadian Pacific Railway and Canadian National Railway, but there’s been a huge push to connect the two countries via new and larger pipelines. Pipelines would dramatically expedite the process of oil movement by making it both quicker and cheaper, and many argue that it would make the process dramatically safer for Canadian and American communities.

“Trans Canada Keystone Oil Pipeline” courtesy of shannonpatrick17 via Flickr

Much of the argument around pipeline transport has focused on the construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline expansion, a gigantic pipe system that would in theory run 1,661 miles between Alberta, Canada and Illinois. The oil giant TransCanada proposed Keystone XL in September 2008 and estimated that it would cost about $7 billion to create. Most of the labor force that would go into its design would be from the United States, creating up to 20,000 new jobs. It would also generate about $585 million in taxes for the states it ran through and over $5.2 billion in property taxes over the course of its functional lifetime. Many saw the pipeline as an incredible chance to increase energy security and to generate new job opportunities. An equal number of people opposed the movement, saying it only put the United States at greater risk of leaks.

There are others who support the pipeline from an environmental/human health perspective. It’s important to remember that while one can object to oil as an energy source in theory, we still very much need it to live our normal lives. Oil transportation will happen one way or another, and pipelines are generally thought as being safer than trains and therefore the lesser of two evils. However, the distinction really depends on how you measure safety. If you use damage to human life and property as your metric, then trains are the far more dangerous method of transportation because they can generate large explosions. When something goes wrong on a train, the damage is immediate and severe. However, a leak from a pipeline can last indefinitely and may even go unnoticed, pouring a continuous stream of oil into the surrounding areas. Because of this, pipelines cause a much greater level of oil spillage overall than trains and may have a much more severe impact on the environment.

Keystone Pipeline Debate

There was a lot of opposition to the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline from environmentalists as well as worried community members who felt that their areas would be endangered by potential spills. A large portion of the public opposition to the pipeline has come from Native American communities that live in the states the pipe would run through. Several Native American groups in Nebraska especially have argued that the location of the pipeline directly endangers the Ogallala Aquifer, which sustains huge numbers of people and a thriving agricultural business. The sheer length of the pipeline is also alarming to many; while it ends in Illinois, the crude oil will then be processed in-state and shipped south via existing pipelines all the way to the Texas coast. This means that gigantic streams of crude oil would constantly be moving across the center band of the United States.

“pipeline” courtesy of Ripperda via Flickr

TransCanada argued that the pipeline would be built with state-of-the-art safety equipment, including over 16,000 smart sensors along its body, to allow for the quick relay of any problems and relevant information to repair teams. These sensors deliver information to satellites, which then dispatch emergency response crews that are located along the pipeline in each state. This level of security is particularly important because the Keystone XL would transport pre-processed crude oil to refineries. Crude oil is so thick that it has to be continuously heated in order to flow properly, which increases its volatility in the event of a spill.

Four years after it was initially proposed, President Obama rejected the Keystone XL expansion presidential permit in 2012. Not to be deterred, TransCanada began to explore alternative methods of building the pipeline and working closely with Nebraska, which led to the submission of another presidential permit less than half a year after the original rejection. The Obama Administration spent several years refusing to make a final decision on the expansion, saying that while it supports the pipeline’s ability to spur business and create jobs, it wouldn’t make a decision that will cause an increase in greenhouse gas emissions.

In November 2015, President Obama made the final decision to reject the Keystone XL pipeline, claiming that the benefit it would have for the economy in the long term wouldn’t outweigh the damage it would do to U.S. energy security and the country’s role as a progressive energy leader. TransCanada responded by asking for a delay on the review of the Nebraska route, which most likely would have pushed the final decision back for another indefinite period of time. This most likely would have placed the power of approving or rejecting Keystone XL in the hands of the winner of the 2016 Presidential race. However, the Obama Administration rejected this as well, ending the battle over the Keystone XL once and for all.

Conservatives were mostly furious and environmentalists were generally overjoyed. However, from a public health perspective, it isn’t completely clear what impact this decision will have. The risk of oil pollution will decrease but railway oil transportation and its dangers will remain prevalent instead. Furthermore, a large part of the argument from pipeline supporters is centered around energy security; increasing oil imports from Canada is viewed as a much safer business deal than increasing them from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, for instance. With the pipeline abandoned, it’s possible that the next energy argument will center around increasing oil extraction from U.S. reserves back to their 2014 levels and beyond, which would increase energy independence but also cause greater damage to the U.S. ecosystems and communities.

Conclusion

No method of oil transportation is completely safe, and different methods have their own advantages and disadvantages. Boats are generally the safest method for moving oil but have the greatest possible impact on the environment when they do actually spill. Oil movement on land is a completely different issue because it involves areas where humans live. While oil spills from trains result in higher levels of human death and property destruction, oil spills from pipelines are more common and often more severe, with longer lasting effects on the environment.

The extreme position is to fight against all forms of oil transportation under the argument that every resource dedicated towards oil industry infrastructure takes away from resources that could go to more progressive transportation technologies, such as electric cars and hydrogen fuel cells. Currently, the world is nowhere near ready to wean itself completely off oil, but competitor transportation technologies have steadily grown larger and larger in the past decades.

It’s important to remember that none of these alternatives are perfect and completely environmentally friendly–electric cars require large-scale mining operations to access the lithium iron for their batteries, for instance. However, overall a shift toward non-fossil fuel based transportation alternatives would still dramatically reduce global emissions. The world may not be technologically prepared to survive without oil, but as long as we depend on it, oil transportation and its risks and dangers will always be a factor in our lives and communities.

References

Americans for Tax Reform: A Brief History of the Keystone XL Pipeline

Aljazeera America: A History of Keystone

Desta: The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, the World Trade Organization, and Regional Trade Agreements

Forbes: Pick Your Poison for Crude: Pipeline, Rail, Truck or Boat

The Hill: Obama Rejects Keystone Pipeline

Institute for 21st Century Energy: Background of Keystone XL

Oil 150: Early Oil Transportation: A Brief Transportation

RiverKeeper: Crude Oil Transportation: A Timeline of Failure

RT: What’s the Hold Up? Still no Decision on Keystone XL Nearly 7 Years Later

Scientific American: The Ogallala Aquifer: Saving a Vital U.S. Water Source

Sightline Institute: Oil Train Explosions: A Timeline in Pictures

U.S. Rail Transportation of Crude Oil: Background and Issues for Congress

The Des Moines Register: Corps: We’re Not For or Against the Bakken Pipeline

World Trade Organization: International Trade Statistics: World Export for Commercial Services

Kyle Downey

Kyle Downey is an Environmental Issues Specialist for Law Street Media. He graduated from Skidmore College with a Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Studies. His main passions are environmentalism and social justice. Contact Kyle at Staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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The Invisible Burden of Electronics

Kyle Downey — Thu, 14 Apr 2016 23:36:06 +0000

"An extraordinary graveyard, Namibia" courtesy of [sosij via Flickr]

Human life has become incredibly dependent on electronic technology. The rate of citizens in the developed world who own cell phones, laptops, and other devices have gone sharply up since 2000 and the electronics industry is currently valued at $2.4 trillion worldwide, second in value only to the oil industry. While the proliferation of electronics in our lives have provided new sources of entertainment, increased information access, and made communication easier, the industry also takes an incredible toll on the planet.

Electronics must be built from resources that are generally found underground, which requires high-intensity mining operations. During production, mechanical devices are treated with a variety of toxic chemicals and at the end of their lifetime, electronics are often shipped to developing countries where they become dangerous sources of hazardous waste. However, much of this happens out of sight of the consumer, making the environmental costs of the electronic industry largely invisible to many parts of the world.

Image courtesy of baselactionnetwork via Flickr

An Overview of the Market

Currently, China is the fastest growing player in the electronics industry, because of a combination of its incredibly low labor manufacturing costs and its lack of domestic environmental regulations. Many Asian exporters, Japan and Hong Kong in particular, have steadily shifted large sections of their electronics markets to China as they find themselves unable to compete with China’s low manufacturing costs (labor costs are about 10 percent lower in China than in Hong Kong and overall production cost savings can range between 35 percent to 75 percent depending on the product). Over the years, China has also instituted several supply embargoes on countries that don’t actively participate in trade with Chinese electronic products. The electronics industry continues to grow stronger and stronger in China as the country makes it a more central part of its economy.

Furthermore, the production of electronics is reliant upon 17 rare earth metals (REMs) and access to these metals strongly impacts a country’s ability to grow within the industry. China currently controls between 90 and 95 percent of the planet’s rare earth metals, giving it a huge advantage within the market. Some may misinterpret China’s control over the industry to mean that 90 percent of rare earth metals are found in Chinese land. However, only about one-third of the world’s REMs, most notably dysprosium and neodymium, can actually be mined in mainland China, although the level of mining in China is still incredibly high. What is actually true is that China is responsible for the production of 95 percent of the rare earth metals worldwide; a large portion of Chinese mining and processing happens in the developing world, most notably in Central Africa, which has a number of REMs that can’t be found anywhere else.

Before we delve into the mining process, it should also be noted that while China controls a huge section of the rare earth industry, other countries do have large reserves on their mainlands. This prevents China from having a complete monopoly on the industry and from shouldering all the responsibility when it comes to global pollution. Australia, for instance, controls the vast majority of tantalum, which is crucial for almost every single electronic device.

The Environmental Impacts of Mining

Without rare earth minerals, electronics cannot be produced. However, REMs are buried underground and require high-intensity mining operations for extraction. Mining inevitably creates a huge burden on the local environment, both in terms of groundwater and air pollution. The mineral extraction process generates an incredible amount of waste–80 tons of waste is produced from just one ounce of gold–and much of this waste, including toxic metals, cyanide, and various acids, ends up in the earth and the groundwater of the surrounding area. This can completely contaminate the aquifers where mining takes place, both causing large-scale biodiversity loss and devastating effects on local communities that lose their source of drinking water. The same processes release large amounts of dangerous chemicals into the atmosphere and cause staggeringly high rates of respiratory illness in miners.

Air Pollution from mining isn’t just localized to the immediate area; gold mining, for instance, is a leading source of airborne mercury in the United States after coal-fired power plants. These problems are further compounded by the fact that most mining happens in developing countries where environmental regulations are minimal and poor communities are unlikely to receive government protection.

Rare earth mineral mining is also uniquely hazardous to the environment because it has a more complex extraction process than common minerals do. REMs must be physically removed from the earth, then crushed and milled into dust form. They then undergo a flotation stage to separate the material bastnaesite from the rubble mixture. The isolated mineral bastnaesite is then treated with acids, oxides, and a variety of other solvents to corrode away the common minerals. What is left is the rare earth minerals in their crude form, which must be further purified and then combined into alloys to reach commercial standards.

This 10-day process can be contrasted to gold, which only requires a one-step separation process, to illustrate how complex the process of extraction and production is for rare earth minerals. Due to this added complexity and the nature of the acids used in the refinement, there is a much higher potential for chemical pollution to surrounding areas with REMs as compared to other mineral extractions.

The Social Impacts of Mining

The effects of the mining industry on the environment are significant, but the social influence of the industry has also been highly disruptive. While the majority of Rare Earth Mineral production happens in China, Africa has the largest or second largest reserves of several crucial REMs and other common metals, including bauxite, cobalt, industrial diamonds, manganese, phosphate rock, soda ash, vermiculite, zirconium and several platinum metal groups.

South Africa and Zimbabwe together make up the majority of the world’s platinum metal group deposits and South Africa possesses every single rare earth metal except Bauxite and crude oil, which makes it work well as a trading partner with the Bauxite rich nation of China. However, African countries domestically control a very small share of the profits of these reserves, and the entire continent on average only receives about 15 percent of global exploration, expenditure, and mining investment. The bulk of the industry’s profits goes to foreign mining companies, which have played a role on the continent in some way, shape, or form since the 1800s, although their share has steadily decreased somewhat in the past 20 years. Furthermore, government corruption in many of the mineral-rich African nations has funneled large percentages of the funds from the mining industry away from domestic development, depriving many areas of the supposed benefits of this trade relationship.

In the worst case scenario, the mining industry has helped to fuel conflict in some of the least stable countries in Central Africa. The most serious case of this is in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where copper, cobalt, and tantalum reserves are controlled and leased to China by a variety of different militia groups. The funds from these mining operations are used by both the government and the rebel forces to finance the weapons and supplies used in the D.R.C.’s ongoing Civil War, which has taken over 5 million lives. While the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation strongly dissuaded many mining companies from dealing in “conflict minerals” and financing the warfare, rare earth trade continues to move in and out of the area, especially with China.

Disposal and its Consequences

After extraction, rare earth metals are manufactured into complete products and must be moved over extensive supply chains and across national borders to reach consumers (this has its own burden of CO2 emissions, as does any product involved in international trade). On the other side of extraction is disposal, when the technology is finally thrown away. This happens faster than would be necessary because of product obsolescence, which often involves designing products that break within a few years so a new one must be purchased, and perceived obsolescence, which is a marketing device used to make consumers believe they need newer, better products.

The average life cycle of a cell phone, for instance, is only 18 months. Both product obsolescence and perceived obsolescence are used to fuel the electronics business by ensuring that consumers buy new products regularly, but they cause large shares of electronics to be thrown away every year that could be designed and marketed to have much longer lifetimes.

While all waste comes with an environmental burden, electronic waste, or e-waste, is particularly dangerous to the environment because of its unique components. Rare earth metals themselves can be to the environment, but electronics are also produced with a number of chemicals that are considered extremely hazardous, such as arsenic, lead, mercury, cadmium and polybrominated flame retardants. More than 20 million tons of e-waste are generated each year, with 3.4 million tons coming from the United States alone. Many electronics are difficult to recycle by nature of their design and the chemicals that compose them, which means that more than 60 percent of electronic products have to be disposed of by traditional methods.

E-waste that isn’t recycled and stays in the country where it was purchased, often ending up in landfills where chemicals can leach into local groundwater. Alternatively, e-waste may be burned in incinerators, despite the fact that this releases dioxin, which is one of the most toxic known substances in the world. E-waste that is recycled, however, isn’t generally recycled but rather shipped to developing countries, which will often allow the import of old electronics. Some degree of this is actually recycled and repaired, but huge quantities become pure waste, accumulating in piles that are even less contained than landfills in the developed world. This leads to hazardous chemicals leaching out rapidly and polluting the ground and waterways of the areas they’re dumped in.

The Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Waste and Their Disposal was held in 1989 and entered into force in 1992. The primary purpose of the convention to address the mass dumping of waste from the developed to the developing world. The convention declared that any waste that could be categorized as flammable, explosive, poisonous, toxic, ecotoxic, corrosive of infectious must be disposed of as close as possible to where it was used and in the most environmentally friendly manner. In 1995, an amendment was added that banned the shipment of e-waste and other hazardous waste to the developing world for final disposal. However, the amendment did not ban the same shipment as long as the developing country was in agreement and the purpose of the shipment was recycling and not just disposal. Of course, in reality this leaves room for difference of interpretation and many developing countries willingly accept e-waste; what happens after it is dumped is generally difficult for the Basel Convention to track or regulate with any certainty.

Proponents of exporting e-waste to the developing world argue that it’s a beneficial arrangement in that it gives poorer nations access to repairable technology and metal materials. The recycling industry abroad also provides jobs and income for residents, who often live in the poorest parts of the Africa and Asia and depend on the industry for their livelihoods. Foreign exports also provide access to markets for recycled materials that simply don’t exist in developed countries, arguably ensuring that as little e-waste as possible is actually wasted.

However, it’s also true that the recycling processes abroad are incredibly unsafe for the humans who conduct them, which is why developed countries rarely allow such processes to take place domestically. The disposal methods are often crude and dangerous and can involve burning circuit boards to isolate the lead material, burning the plastic off wires in order to access copper, and dissolving heavy metals in acids over fresh water. These operations often take place in residential areas and are performed with little to no safety equipment.

Image courtesy of baselactionnetwork via Flickr

Conclusion

The electronics industry has a significant impact on the environment at several important steps in its life cycle. Resource extraction through mining places a considerable burden on groundwater and the atmosphere, especially because most areas where REM mining takes place have very little environmental regulatory oversight. Furthermore, the mining industry can have negative social impacts on unstable countries where government corruption and internal conflict is high. The problem is compounded by the relevance of the mining industry to the economies of many African countries, which both need the revenue and have the ambition of furthering their national resource control to become key players in the electronics industry themselves.

At the end of the life of an electronic device, its disposal poses yet another danger to the environment because of the number of dangerous chemicals that go into each product. Historically, the bulk of the burden of e-waste is felt in the developing world where the waste is dumped. Dangerous chemicals enter the surrounding environment and the workers charged with disposal expose themselves to terrible health risks. While the Basel Convention has had an important influence on fighting international dumping, it’s still practiced widely and e-waste is still a huge problem globally.

Unfortunately, both the problems of extraction and disposal are largely outside of the view of the consumer, giving the issue little salience among most participants in the electronics industry. As the second most valuable industry on earth, the electronics market is certainly not going to slow down anytime in the near future, until perhaps REMs become a truly scarce resource. Since the environmental burdens of electronics are necessary to increase industry profits and the vast majority of the consumer base does not know or care about these burdens, it’s difficult to say whether or not effective solutions to these will eventually be produced.