Global supply of rare earth elements could be wiped out by 2012 Posted on January 27th, 2010
It’s the bubble you’ve probably never heard of: The rare earth bubble. And it’s due to pop in 2012, potentially devastating the industries of western nations that depend on these rare elements.
What industries are those? The automobile industry uses tens of thousands of tons of rare earth elements each year, and advanced military technology depends on these elements, too. Lots of “green” technologies depend on them, including wind turbines, low-energy light bulbs and hybrid car batteries. In fact, much of western civilizationdepends on rare earth elements such as terbium,lanthanum and neodymium.
So what’s the problem with these rare elements? 97 percent of the world’s supply comes from mines in China, and China is prepared to simply stop exporting these strategic elements to the rest of the world by 2012.
If that happens, the western world will be crippled by the collapse of available rare earth elements. Manufacturing of everything from computers and electronics to farm machinery will grind to a halt. Electronics will disappear from the shelves and prices for manufactured goods that depend on these rare elements will skyrocket.
These 17 rare earth elements (REE) — all of which are metals — are strategic resources upon which entire nations are built. In many ways, they are similar to rubber — a resource so valuable and important to the world that many experts call it the “fourth most important natural resource in the world,” right after water, steel and oil. Without rubber, you couldn’t drive your car to work or water your lawn. Many medical technologies would cease to work and virtually all commercial construction would grind to a halt.
Many of the strategic battles fought in World War II were fought, in fact, over control of rubber, most of which now comes through Singapore and its surrounding regions (Malaysia and Indonesia).
Global shortage of Rare Earth Elements coming…
Now, by threatening to cut off the world’s supply of rare earth elements, China appears to be attempting to monopolize this extremely important strategic resource. According to information received by The Independent, by 2012 China may cease all exports of rare earth elements, reserving them for its own economic expansion.
An article in that paper quotes REE expert Jack Lifton as saying, “A real crunch is coming. In America, Britain and elsewhere we have not yet woken up to the fact that there is an urgent need to secure the supply of rare earths from sources outside China.”
And yet virtually no one has heard of this problem! People are familiar with peak oil, global warming, ocean acidification, the national debt and the depletion of fossil water, but very few are aware of the looming crisis in rare metals… upon which much of western civilization rests.
For those who still aren’t convinced this is a big deal, consider this: Without rare earth elements, we would have no iPhones. Yeah, I know. That’s a disaster, huh?
We would have no fiber optic cables, either. No X-ray machines, no car stereos and no high-tech missile guidance systems for the military. And here’s the real kicker: No electric motors.
Demand outstrips supply
The problem with the supply of rare earth elements is that demand has skyrocketed over the last decade from 40,000 tons to 120,000 tons. Meanwhile, China has been cutting its exports. Now, it only exports about 30,000 tons a year — only one-fourth of the demand the world needs.
Take Notice of the Sustainability Factor and Fight Back Against the Disposable Economy Posted on January 10th, 2010
In a 3-part series, titled Take Notice of the Sustainability Factor and the Disposable Economy of the World, the sorry state of our consumerist cultures was outlined. Inside the next two generations, we will likely face massive shortages of critical resources and starvation on a scale the world has not seen.
After publishing those articles here on NaturalNews, we received several questions from readers ranging from despair at the hopelessness of it all to questions of how we can resolve this problem. More than a few wanted to know why it was thought that government should not be the answer to this issue and why governments aren`t capable of dealing with environmental issues overall.
The largest reason that governments cannot deal with questions of environmental change is because most of the changes that must take place are cultural. You cannot force culture on people and all governments, whether democracies or empires, are only able to deal in force.
No, the changes required to move our societies towardssustainability are complete alterations of our consumerist paradigm. Wealth, abundance, and prosperity need to be redefined.
We all know that happiness does not come from owning the latest gadget or having a bigger house than the neighbors. True happiness comes from health, well-being, and the knowledge that you and your loved ones are prosperous in your endeavors.
There are things you can do, individually, to inspire others around you to take steps towards a cleaner, more sustainable lifestyle. When enough of us are doing this, our pocketbooks will be the voting bloc that changes how corporations and governments conduct themselves.
1 - Use Less, Waste Less, Have More
The vast majority of the energy consumed by individuals is through electricity and heating gas or oils. Lower these numbers as much as possible. Turn down the thermostat, drive fewer miles, compost your garbage, recycle, use a clothesline, etc. These are the things you always see being promoted as steps towards greening your lifestyle. Take those steps.
2 - Buy Less, Own Less, Be Abundant
Focus not on products that you want or think you should have and instead focus on products that you truly need. Also, ask how long will that product you`re purchasing really last? Focus on what you need, not what you think you need, and buy products that are built to last, not made to be thrown out. Spend your money wisely: spend more on things that matter and none on things that don`t.
3 - Talk More, Help More, Be More
Turn off the electricity/intelligence-sucking television and spend time with friends, family, and neighbors. How many neighbors around your home can you name by name? What`s their favorite food? Do they have pets? How old are their children? If you can`t answer all of these questions about everyone who lives around you, you don`t have neighbors–you have strangers who live nearby. Talk to them, help them with their projects and fill their needs, and they`ll fill yours too. Have a community.
Spend time as a community together; working, shopping, trading, laughing, and being involved make all of us happier. It also makes for a better environment both mentally and physically.
People, who work for companies that can potentially pollute, won`t allow that to happen when they know the faces of their neighbors who will be affected by that pollution. Local governments are more likely to think about their constituents when they shake their hands at church, ballgames, and community events.
Working together, as a community, we can make big changes and those changes need to be made sooner rather than later.
Resources:
Take Notice of the Sustainability Factor and the Disposable Economy of the World Parts 1, 2, and 3
The Sustainability Factor: What Sustainability Means and Why You Need to Know by Aaron Turpen
Finding Happiness the Natural Way by Charmaine D. Mercado, NaturalNews
Compassion and Responsibility by Michael Fondi, Campaign for Liberty
How fragile we are: Why the complexity of modern civilization threatens us all Posted on December 15th, 2009
The fragility of our modern human civilization did not become clear to me until I began living full-time in South America. As a resident of Vilcabamba, Ecuador, I’ve grown accustomed to the idea of knowing where the things I consume come from.
The water I drink, for example, comes from a hole in the ground that taps into a water table replenished by the clouds hanging over the Podocarpus National Forest to the East. I can make a logical connection between the clouds, the rainfall, and the water in my glass. And if the well pump fails, I know I can always carry a bucket to the river a few hundred meters away and scoop up virtually unlimited quantities of water that recently fell out of the sky.
During a recent trip to Tucson, however, I found myself hesitating when I turned on the kitchen faucet. I paused, marveling at the magic of this water which apparently appears from nowhere. And it’s always there, reliable and uninterrupted. That’s when I noticed myself asking the commonsense question: “Where does the water come from around here?”
I had no idea.
The realization astonished me. I lived in Tucson for over five years and yet the thought suddenly occurred to me that if the water stopped magically flowing out of these pipes, I had absolutely no idea where to physically find waterbeyond the bottled water in the grocery stores, and that wouldn’t last very long.
Sure, I know where the rivers are in Tucson, but these desert rivers are bone dry river beds for all but a few days of the year. And yes, I know how to get water out of cactus, but it’s hard work, and the water isn’t pure water. Try to live off cactus juice for a few days and you’ll end up with severe diarrhea (which is dehydrating).
This thought never hit me when I lived in America, but now it struck me hard: Life in many U.S. cities is extremely fragile. Much of the abundance and convenience of city life is pure illusion, conjured up by a system of underground pipes that deliver water to your home and another set of pipes that magically dispose of your flushed liquid waste. A set of wires brings electricity that makes your home livable (at the great expenditure of energy for heat or cooling), and cheap gasoline makes it possible for fresh produce to magically appear in the grocery stores that feed us all with food from who-knows-where.
Take away any one of these — electricity, water, sewers, fuel, food — and virtually every U.S. city becomes an urban death trap for all its citizens.
It’s not just Tucson, either: The entire American Southwest is extremely fragile when it comes to supporting life. The same story holds true with Phoenix, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, San Diego and many other cities and towns of all sizes. The population currently living in the Southwest USA is far greater than what those geographic regions could support on their own: It is the mass-importation of water, electricity, food and fuel that makes life possible there.
And all those mass imports are extremely fragile.
The flipside of this problem exists across Northern USA and Canada, where extremely cold winters make these regions unlivable without the steady importation of heating fuel. Most Americans and Canadians would freeze to death in less than a week if left without some ability to heat their homes during a severe winter freeze. Very few people (in the cities especially) still have free-standing, non-electric wood-burning stoves or effective fireplaces that can keep them warm and alive during such an outage. Most of the younger generation has never even chopped wood! (And wouldn’t know where to start if they had to…)
Read the rest by clicking here.
Take Notice of the Sustainability Factor and the Disposable Economy of the World, Part III Posted on December 3rd, 2009
by Aaron Turpen, NaturalNews.com
The human population currently thrives on a basic food source: grains. Our current food paradigm requires that we have wheat for our breads, barley for our animals, rice for our tables, and soy for our animals and food additives. Corn is another important food source, especially in the Americas. All five of these food sources make up the bulk of the world`s diet at present.
To grow these crops using our modern, industrial methods requires a lot of resources. It requires oil for the machinery and transportation, artificial fertilizers (nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorous), and water.
All of these crops, cereal grains especially, require potassium (commonly called “potash”) to thrive, especially when farmed industrially. Potash is literally mined out of the ground (it is a mineral). Between 2006 and 2008, the price of potash went up by 500%. It’s still rising. We`re running out of “easy” potash.
Water is another resource growing more scarce. The planet is 2/3 water, but only 2% of that is fresh water. Most of that fresh water is polar ice, glaciers, and in the atmosphere. What`s left is fresh water that we can utilize. It cycles at a given rate. Currently, we use 30% more than there is in America and 50% more than there is in China, and it gets little better as we circle the globe. Most of the excess comes from aquifers, which are quickly drying up.
Oil has peaked, which leaves nitrogen. Nitrogen we aren`t running out of, but we’re heavily over-using it. Again, because of industrial farming. Nitrogen is so cheaply acquired that farmers can dump it by the train load on their fields without concern. The excess runs off into groundwater and eventually into rivers and the ocean.
At the mouth of the Mississippi River, where it dumps into the Gulf of Mexico, there is a huge “dead zone.” It stretches from Louisiana to Houston, Texas and out into the Gulf nearly five miles from its source. That dead zone is due to all of that nitrogen raging into and down the Mississippi and into the Gulf.
The nitrogen causes an explosion of algal growth, soaking it up. That algae breathes the oxygen in the water, sucking it up at such a rate that anything else that requires oxygen (basically everything living) either dies or has to leave. These dead zones are at the mouth of nearly every river in the world.
Many people are under the impression that we can just magically switch from our current, industrial methods of farming to organic and more sustainable methods whenever we need to. This is not the case. Even disregarding USDA Organic requirements, it takes several years (close to a decade) for a farm to move from synthetic fertilization to organic methods. The soil requires time to recover.
So, we face a big decision as humans. Do we continue as we are and eventually starve to death when the resources start to run out? Or do we change our ways and hope that in the next generation (or less), we can reverse the trend and become sustainable?
It`s not a question for governments; it`s a question for people. We all have to change, individually and in communities. That change can`t come by government coercion. It comes through personal life choices that you must make, your family must make, your neighbors, friends, and community must make.
It starts, however, with you. Are you sustainable yet?
Take Notice of the Sustainability Factor and the Disposable Economy of the World, Part II Posted on November 28th, 2009
by Aaron Turpen, NaturalNews.com
As we drown the planet in garbage, pollute the waterways with industrial agricultural runoff, and extract the last of the easy-to-acquire oil, minerals, and other resources, we rush blindly forward into our own doom.
At very best, we have reached Peak Oil extraction right now. It’s likely we’ve already passed by the peak and are on the downhill. We’re about to reach Peak Water, Peak Potassium, Peak Copper, Peak… well, Peak Everything.
We don’t exist in an economy or on a planet where resources stand alone to rise or fall on their own. We live in an existence in which every resource is part of a larger web. This web of resources encompasses metals, minerals, petroleum, water, food, and more. Every resource we use is part of that web.
When one part of the web falters or collapses, the others take the strain and often can pull it into recovery. When it became harder to mine for coal, for instance, new technology utilizing oil-burning machinery stepped in to take up the slack. This, of course, required more oil to make up the difference. When food began to fall behind the population’s need, industrial agriculture was born and the use of oil-burning machines to facilitate and transport that agriculture made up the difference.
You can see from those two examples that the most important component to our current web of resources is oil. Petroleum is the basis for most of our other technologies today. We’re running out of the cheap stuff and something else will have to make up for it.
Except there isn’t anything else.
Every commodity is strung together in this synergistic web and too many of these commodities are stretched thin.
Industrial agriculture requires huge amounts of artificial fertilizers (nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorous) as well as huge amounts of water and oil to operate. We’re running out of three of those commodities and another of them is a cause for other destructive forces that are causing still more resources to fail.
So what do we do? Our farming methods must become sustainable. This needs to happen within the next generation, or we will begin to starve on a scale never before seen.
Governments can’t do this; only people can make it happen. Starting with you.
