Our green future’s at risk from shortfall in rare metals - Green Living - Go Green. Wales’ bid to become a leader in low carbon technologies could be at risk unless action is taken to address the shortfall in supply of essential metals, an international conference of scientists in Wales will hear this week. The development of low-carbon transport, wind power and environmentally-friendly technology relies on the availability of “strategic metals”, so called for their importance as well as their restricted supply in the world. Given these metals are distributed unevenly in varying but finite quantities in the earth’s crust, 97% of the world’s rare earth elements (REE) are produced in China, while 80% of the world’s platinum and rhodium used in modern autocatalysts and fuel cells come from a single source in South Africa.
Unless new sources of these valuable metals are discovered, the development of new green technologies, including cars and computers, may grind to a halt. US set to challenge China rare earth export restriction. Global mining boom is leading to landgrab, says report | Environment. Huichol people near Real de Catorce, Mexico, who are trying to stop a $100m mining project by First Majestic Silver Corp. Photograph: Christian Palma/AP The global mining, oil and gas industries have expanded so fast in the last decade they are now leading to large-scale "landgrabbing" and threatening farming and water supplies, according to a report by environment and development groups in Europe, Africa and India. "The catalogue of devastation is growing. We are no longer talking about isolated pockets of destruction and pollution. In just 10 years, iron ore production has more than doubled, coal has risen 45% and metals like lithium by 125%.
"Industrial wastelands are being formed by vast open-pit mines and mountain top removal, and the poisoning of water systems, deforestation, and the contamination of topsoil," says the report by the Gaia foundation and groups including Friends of the Earth International, Grain, Oilwatch and Navdanya in India. The Race for What’s Left: The Global Scramble for the World’s Last Resources. By Michael T. Klare. Metropolitan Books. » Innovation Watch. Home » The Race for What’s Left: The Global Scramble for the World’s Last Resources. By Michael T. Klare. Metropolitan Books. Read reviews on Amazon The Race for What’s Left: The Global Scramble for the World’s Last Resources by Michael T.
New York: Metropolitan Books, 2012 The world is facing an unprecedented crisis of resource depletion — a crisis that goes beyond “peak oil” to encompass shortages of coal and uranium, copper and lithium, water and arable land. As Klare explains, this invasion of the final frontiers carries grave consequences. Michael T.