Our reliance on rare earth minerals, used in everything from smartphones to clean tech, is leaving us exposed to future risks.
Rare Earths
EcocentricEcocentric
Raring to Fight: The U.S. Tangles with China over Rare-Earth Exports
President Obama has been talking tough about what he sees as unfair Chinese trade policy since at least this year’s State of the Union speech, when the President boasted that his Administration had brought up trade cases against …
EcocentricEnergy
Shoring Up the Elements of a Clean Tech Economy
Heard of germanium? How about neodymium? Or terbium? Or rhenium? They’re not extras from a Star Trek film—these are real world elements are some of the rarest members of the periodic table. But as hard as they are to find, these substances are increasingly important to green tech, clean tech and high tech—and the U.S. doesn’t have …
EcocentricUncategorized
More on Rare Earths: Looking for a Way out From Under a Monopoly
Last month, after China and Japan locked horns over Tokyo’s arrest of a Chinese fishing captain whose boat collided with the Japanese Coast Guard, shipments of rare earths from China to Japan started to dry up at over 30 different Japanese companies. Since then, Beijing has stuck to its story – that the there is no …