

Rare earth: The New Great Game - cwan
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/paulmason/2009/11/rare_earth_the_new_great_game.html

======
akamaka
Summary: rare earth minerals are probably going to be increasingly important
in the future, and governments are getting involved in managing the supply.
Currently most of the production takes place in China.

I wouldn't recommended reading the article, because it's a jumble of facts and
numbers with no thesis and no insight. It's got the vague "yellow peril"
undertone that's common these days, but doesn't offer any real evidence that
rare earth elements will be the next oil.

~~~
Tiktaalik
I disagree strongly. "Probably" going to be important? The article makes it
very clear that rare earth minerals are absolutely essential to the clean
technologies that will drive the post oil future. While the United States has
ignored creating a strategy on developing future technologies and its major
corporations have colluded to kill green tech, the forward thinking Chinese
government has aggressively positioned themselves to being central to any
development of electric cars and any other tech that is strongly reliant on
batteries.

~~~
akamaka
That may well be true, but the article isn't very convincing from any angle.
There's no technical or economic analysis of other ways to make magnets (say,
emerging technologies vs. more expensive, low-tech technologies). No in-depth
data from geological studies about the quantity of rare-earth deposits in
other countries, and how easily they could be exploited. No evidence that the
Chinese government is actually making an active effort to corner the market on
rare-earth elements (low labour costs have made it a leader in many low-value
areas, too).

And, nobody is totally certain that battery-driven cars are necessarily the
way forward. A decade ago, when fuel cells where the hot story, maybe this
article would have been talking about China cornering the market on platinum
for catalysts.

------
patio11
Japanese industrial policy seeks pretty much three things: competitiveness of
the Japanese export industry, assured supply for the Japanese domestic
markets, and _preventing China from screwing us_. They have a curious frenemy
thing going on: increasing economic cooperation with the aim of effectively
establishing economic mutually assured destruction if either restarts the more
traditional Japan/China relationship. (Japanese industry essentially can't
survive without Chinese raw materials at present -- rare earth being only one
example of hundreds. Similarly, Japanese investment is fueling much of China's
economic boom.)

Sidenote: Notice the California NIMBYism versus global warming angle? I
suppose our coming global apocalypse is worth any effort to stop... as long as
it doesn't require _radiation_ in California.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
About the NIMBYism: that was just one more part of the article that sounded
like a press release from the US rare earth producers.

Basically, they want protectionist policies to avoid foreign competition and
they want exemptions from environmental legislation. So just the same as
_every other business in existence_.

Every business has its pet bogeyman to scare legislators (or to give
legislators plausible cover for their actions). I'm sure China will play this
role well for various groups.

------
cameldrv
The only reason 97% of them are mined in China is why everything else is
produced in China -- it's cheaper. There is a shuttered mine in the U.S. that
is being restarted that has and will produce all of these elements. The mine
closed because they were undercut by China. If China won't sell at any price,
presumably they will be profitable again. IMO, the U.S. should embargo Chinese
rare earths since they have been shown to be a politically unreliable
supplier.

------
Tichy
"rare earth" and "cheap" sound a bit contradictory.

