Precious metals

There is another battle between jobs and environment that is getting very little attention and that has to do with solar panels and precious metals. Solar panels use metals such as iridium and platinum and 90% of these metals are found in China. Currently there are plans on the books to start copper mining in Alaska and Minnesota but both places are bogged down in arguments between groups. Precious metals are one of the by-products of copper mining and solar panels require a dependable source of precious metals. In the future certain forms of carbon may replace these metals but that is a long way off. China presently produces more than 95% of all rare earth materials that are vital in the creation of a big variety of electronic technologies including lithium car batteries, solar panels, wind turbines, flat-screen television, compact fluorescent light bulbs, petroleum-to-gasoline catalytic cracking, and military defense components such as missile guidance systems. It also dominates abilities to process them. This enables it to attract product manufactures to operate there as a condition of doing business, ration exports to maximize prices, and punish nations that don’t go along with its policy interests through supply embargoes. Beijing reduced rare earth shipments by 9% in 2010 over 2009, and has recently announced plans to reduce exports by another 35%. Instead of providing mining jobs here in the US we will be sending those jobs to China and of course any pollution that goes along with them. It is what we are doing with our coal. We are becoming NIMBY’s.