Rare-earth elements are very important in electronic devices like that crack-berry buzzing and hopping around on your desk. They are also very important in permanent magnets, like the ones in jet engines, on the fins of missiles, and in your Prius. Also, guidance systems and lasers; the Department of Defense uses more than anyone else--like fossil fuels. Actually, the permanent magnet that gives you that scintillating vibration from your yell-phone is made from rare-earth elements.
So, you ask, why do we care if our predator drones can't function without Gandolinium, and our lasers need Erbium? We can always ask a geologist to find us some, and we can always rip the top off a mountain in Chile and dig some up, right? G.W. Bush was always talking about how years in the future historians would vindicate all of his calamities, so he must have been looking after our future supply of these elements, right? Like invading countries with lots of them? Well, not quite. Granted, Afghanistan has some pretty good deposits, but our boys aren't fighting for our freedoms over there because of that.
Our leaders have been too busy deregulating the banks to think about where the next iPhone is going to come from. And while the dubster was spreading freedom and the American way across the Middle East, those gol-dang Chinese were locking down a monopoly on 97% of the rare-earth extraction industries on the planet. Yes, our corporate overlords not only moved our manufacturing sector to China, but they also paid no heed to the fact that the Chinese were also locking up the natural resources, and not just those found in China (They are also buying up Russian natural gas and African and Iranian oil). Interesting how China is monopolizing markets that our
And, finally, one might ask, aren't there lots of rare-earth elements here in the good-ol' US of A that the dang liberals and tree-huggers won't let us dig up? There actually are, but the cost of an environmental impact statement isn't what has shut down the mines. It is the fact that China is mining them like mad, with no environmental controls and no interest in protecting their miners--yeah, yeah, unions are bad, but so is a mine explosion. This means that we can't compete with the low-overhead Chinese extraction industry. And, a few years ago, China dumped tons of cheap rare-earth elements on the market, which drove the price down and put many American mining companies out of business. Because the Chinese had lots of cash--they didn't lend us all of it--they could buy up mineral rights and mining companies in developing countries like the Congo. Turns out the American tax payer would have to subsidize the mining industry in order to get it going again, and relaxing environmental regs won't open it up. There are, however more mining companies getting out the picks and shovels, e.g., MolyCorp. This is good-ol' free-market capitalism, but on a nation-state scale. Milton Friedman has a chubby in his grave.
But what about recycling e-waste, won't that help? The problem there is that each cell phone doesn't have but a tiny bit of these metals in it, and it is dang hard to get out. Same with computers and ballistic missiles. When you take a concentrated deposit of metals, then concentrate it more, and put a little tiny bit in gadgets that are going to be spread all over the US, and missiles that are going to be blown to bits in some Pakistani village, you can't go and get them all and re-concentrate the stuff--physically or economically.
So, the next time you surf to CNN, check out what China did to Japan when the Japanese were holding a Chinese fisherman who was fishing in disputed territory. The Chinese cut the export allotment of rare-earth elements, the price of the metals jumped more than 30%, and Japan immediately capitulated (this part was left out of the CNN article).
And remember, support your local geologist. You may need him or her some day.
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