Do you know that the rare earth metals are a collection of 17 elements essential for your future?
Did you know it take 2 tons of rare earths per “green” wind turbine? And did you know the California desert holds one of the largest concentrations of rare earths on the planet?
Wow! So California should be rich, right?
Nope.
Mining in California is severely restricted to “protect” the desert tortoise
Over 90% of our rare earths
are now mined in China as we erect wind turbines in the California
desert in — you guessed it! — desert tortoise habitat! California
taxpayers will have to pay $25 million to move the tortoises!
Can tortoises, mining and wealth co-exist in California? Of course! Happily. But
you’d have to remove all the special interest groups from the equation
to get that kind of free-market common sense back in place.
What’s really funny about all
this is that we’ve replaced our dependency on fossil fuels drilled in
the Middle East with a dependency on rare earths mined in China.
Nothing, absolutely nothing has changed but the country and the type of nonrenewable we are dependent on!
The more things change, the more they stay the same!