Having finally come to their senses the editors of the Washington Post articulate their plan for wresting control of the production and processing of rare earths and other materials used in battery production from China:
The U.S. transition to cleaner energy technology is underway, supported by new incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act. Benefits to the planet could be significant. Yet so could the geopolitical risks to the United States. Moving from fossil fuels to wind and solar power means shifting from reliance on resources the United States produces to reliance on imported ones. And for many of the materials — lithium, nickel, copper, cobalt — the United States’ long-term adversary China is a key producer, processor or both.
The most useful aspect of the piece is the graphic at the top of this post which illustrates the top three producers and processors of a number of key materials. It provides a succinct statement of the problem.
The editors conveniently neglect to mention that until recently the United States was the biggest processor if not the biggest producer of most of those materials. U. S. companies have largely gotten out of those businesses due to a combination of regulations, Chinese investment, and Chinese dumping.
The editors’ plan consists largely of recognizing that this race is a marathon rather than a sprint and something they call “friend-shoring”. So, for example, Canada could produce a lot more cobalt than it does at present, and would be a good source.
This is the best advice in the editorial:
Environmentalists should remember: The question is not whether mining will occur but where. If not under regulated conditions in this country, it could well be in places such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, the world’s leading cobalt source. Though companies there have cleaned up their act recently, working conditions remain poor and a significant minority of the substance still comes from artisanal mines, often dug by children.
A shorter version would be that for the last 30 years they’ve been wrong and I’ve been right. We should have taken whatever steps were necessary to maintain our production and processing. Now we need to play catch-up which will be more expensive than maintaining our production and processing would have been.
