Moderate Palestinian factions would be dead.
Exactly. We inflict a lot more collateral damage than Israel does.
"Factions" in the Palestinians represent where the terrorist money comes from, not what the people want. It's impossible for the Palestinians to have a meaningful representative government until that terrorist money is severely curtailed.
Yeah, heavy metals become an issue when you use them in non-recoverable forms. They're not a problem when a proper recovery system exists.
What I would like to see is mandated deposits on heavy metals. To pull a number out of the air for illustration lets say $10/kg on lead, indexed for inflation. The recipient pays the source that amount independent of any other aspects of the transaction. (If you're mining them the recipient is the government.) The government is always a "buyer", although they need not actually pay anything beyond the deposit amount. Gathering it from loose forms in the environment (which would include ordinary trash landfills!) is not mining as it was already extracted.
Set the deposit high enough to get most of it recycled when the current use is no longer functional or needed. (I've got a decent amount of lead around here in the form of worn-out lead-acid batteries and no meaningful recycling options for it. That sort of situation should not exist for a material we don't want loose in the environment! A few now serve secondary duty as weights (they're AGM, not wet cells, no acid issues) but most just are stacked up awaiting a practical way to recycle them.)
While most carbon uses aren't recoverable I favor the same approach--a cost per kg for mining (or drilling) it.
