US defense, security, industry should not be held hostage to China, when we could mine here
You’d be crazy to buy a car based on its shiny exterior, dazzling instruments and gorgeous leather interior – but without examining the engine or taking a test drive.
And yet that’s how America has handled the metals and minerals that are vital to our defense, medical, communication, automotive, aerospace, lasers, computer/AI/data centers and every other sector of our economy. They’s worth multi-trillions of dollars and are the foundation for jobs, living standards, national security, “green” energy and more.
In the Stone Age, humans relied on flint and obsidian. The Bronze Age utilized copper, tin and lead, plus gold and silver. The Iron Age prioritized iron and carbon. Today, we need almost every element in the Periodic Table, plus countless non-metallic minerals.
However, without any attempt to determine what deposits might lie beneath, decision makers have made hundreds of millions of acres of America’s “public lands” off limits to exploration and mining, primarily in Alaska and the eleven states west of the Dakotas. They’re managed by federal agencies for nearly every activity and value except potential subsurface treasures.
In fact, well over two-thirds of those lands have been effectively placed under lock and key: an area larger than Arizona, Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming combined!
Of course, some places are so unique, magnificent or ecologically priceless that they should be off limits to resource extraction – from Arches to Zion National Park. But America cannot afford wide buffer zones around them, much less buffer zones around the buffer zones.
Moreover, countless other areas have also been closed off – some by acts of Congress, others by presidential or bureaucratic decree, or unending wilderness and wildlife studies. All with virtually no consideration of subsurface values. Sometimes federal officials even refuse to follow the law, because they “don’t think Congress should have enacted laws allowing exploration.”
Many are in regions that in past eons were the most geologically active in North America. Processes unleashed by plate tectonic, volcanic and other forces all but ensure that these lands contain highly mineralized zones, many with world-class deposits of gold, silver, platinum, molybdenum, chromium, antimony, titanium, copper, cobalt, lithium, graphite and other critically needed metals and minerals.
The Comstock Lode and other magnificent discoveries in past centuries further attest to their potential.
Today, the United States is dangerously dependent on foreign nations for 50 to 99% of 34 vital metals and minerals … and 100% of 15 others. China is our primary supplier for 24 of them; Russia for 6. In fact, China controls some 80% of global mining and more than 90% of refining and processing for all 17 rare earth metals. Virtually all graphite, natural and synthetic, is processed in China for export to EV, Powerwall and other lithium-ion battery makers worldwide.
Current policies leave the United States vulnerable to political, economic and military pressure. Revising them and properly evaluating our public lands resource base will take decades, but the process must begin now – for rare earth elements (REEs) and other critical and strategic materials. Exploratory work has virtually no noticeable impacts on lands or wildlife. Remote sensing technologies on satellites, airplanes and drones will collect data on gravitational, magnetic, electromagnetic and other anomalies and trends across large regions, enabling geologists to zero in on mineralized areas.
Aerial and ground-based mapping of outcrops, rock samples and soil tests, combined with reviews of historical mining and exploration, then pinpoint locations where small drilling rigs collect rock cores and downhole instrumental data, to evaluate mineral content in multiple locations throughout a prospect. All of this helps geologists create 3-D computerized profiles of possible subsurface ore bodies.
Eventually, they learn enough to determine whether a prospect warrants entering the years-long planning, permitting and financing process.
Any open pit or underground mining may change land contours, perhaps dramatically, from what we see today, but this is for major metal ore bodies that are vitally important to America; occur very rarely; and average 3-5 square miles Washington, DC is 61 sq mi) for open pit mines, including the mine, processing plants, waste dumps (overburden and tailings), settling ponds, access roads and inactive areas.
All US operations are conducted under strict environmental protection, pollution prevention, waste rock disposal, workplace safety and land reclamation regulations.
However, anti-mining activists want no mining and use hypothetical land disturbance, pollution and endangered species claims to justify delaying, blocking and bankrupting all these activities, even initial exploration, even for materials required for wind, solar and battery technologies. They absurdly claim even a single mine will forever destroy the purity and sanctity of a designated wilderness or other wild area literally the size of Rhode Island, Delaware or Vermont.
Hypocritically, they express few concerns about wind, solar and transmission line projects that blanket, disrupt and destroy tens or hundreds of square miles of scenic and habitat lands, and kill countless birds, bats and terrestrial wildlife – or grid-scale battery installations that threaten human lives.
The Trump Administration is advancing multiple strategies to address this national security craziness.
To ensure near-term replacements for REEs and other materials that China has strategically monopolized, President Trump last week announced US investment deals with Australia, which already has 89 active rare earth exploration projects and will also work with the US to build less-polluting processing plants and improve supply chains Down Under. He is pursuing similar details with other friendly nations.
Other plans include strategic mineral “price floors” that will let governments support domestic mining operations facing sudden threats of collapsing prices and bankruptcy, due to major producers flooding global markets with materials extracted and processed cheaply because their countries have no or minimal environmental and workplace safety rules.
This week, Mr. Trump and Chinese Premier Xi Jinping agreed to a one-year easing of controls China had placed on rare earth mineral exports. Beijing had planned to impose stringent export controls on “every element of production’ associated with REEs. If “even a single gram” of any rare earth mined, processed or refined in China was in a US medical, military or other product, Beijing could veto its sale worldwide.
The Trump Administration is also reexamining US land use and withdrawal policies, streamlining the construction and operating permit process, issuing permits that have sat in bureaucratic limbo for years, seeking ways to limit or resolve environmentalist lawsuits against world-class deposits, reducing or removing excessive and unnecessary permitting obstacles, and spurring research into systems for processing and refining REEs and other metals and minerals that result in fewer toxic effluents.
America can no longer let environmental values and ideologies trump or override vital national defense, economic and security needs. The United States has long sacrificed access to vital mining prospects in favor of ecological values.
Now we must begin temporarily impacting some pristine areas to locate, evaluate and extract strategic materials – and end our dangerous and needless dependence on unfriendly and unreliable sources, before returning the lands to near-pristine conditions once mining is completed.
Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, climate change, economic development and human rights.