Are Nations Gearing Up For War Over Rare Metals?

Rare metals are at the heart of renewable energy and digitization.

Wind energy, solar energy, EVs, smartphones and so many other carbon-free energy projects are using rare metals on a global scale.

Rare metals are found in minute proportions in more abundant metals, making their extraction and refinement expensive and difficult. The first problem is that most of these resources are in the hands of China—an advantage it is naturally tempted to exploit.

Already, other countries with such underground resources have for shady reasons we will go into, abandoned their mining operations, which largely gives China a global monopoly and Beijing the title of the 'New Rare Metals Master'.

This podcast will discuss the perils of this dependence with case studies ranging from super magnets to long-range missiles, where the West has acted inconsistently or entirely without foresight.

Enter the next predicament: mining these rare minerals is anything but clean! Green energies and resources harbor a dark secret.

Extracting and refining rare metals is highly polluting, and recycling them has proved a disappointment. We are therefore faced with the paradox that the latest and greatest technology (and supposedly the greenest to halt the ecological countdown)

relies mostly on 'dirty' rare metals.

How do we overcome the contradiction?

Listen in on Emir Phillips - American Pragmatist