Why is it bad to rely on foreign cement?
From an economic perspective, relying on foreign cement production will place the U.S. construction industry at the mercy of potentially uncertain sources of supply. From an environmental perspective, reliance on foreign sources of supply actually will increase global greenhouse emissions because transporting cement to the United States from international markets will require tremendous additional use of fossil fuels, thus substantially increasing the amount of carbon emissions per unit of cement used in this country. Finally, many foreign sources of cement are manufactured under conditions that are simply not as environmentally protective as we find in the United States. For example, one of the purposes of the NESHAP is to reduce mercury emissions. However, increased releases of mercury from less-controlled facilities overseas will simply add to the global pool of mercury in the Earth’s biosphere. Such mercury can travel, increasing soil and water deposits throughout the world, includ
