Rare metals today

In 2010 and several times since China has cut the supply of rare earth metals and since they control 90% of the worlds supply this has resulted in shortages and price hikes. In recent times China's need for these metals has grown to the point where they will no longer have excess supplies and exports may stop completely. They even warned that world that they would be using most of their own production and said they would put China first. While there is a lot of talk about the US getting their own supply not much has been done. It takes many years to get a mine going from scratch but there is a mine in California that went bankrupt and could be reopened and get production underway quickly but still no action. It represents a conundrum to environmentalist who believe that mining is bad but need these metals for wind mills and solar panels. It comes back to what business always faces and that is risk/return. While these people dither away the hours with endless meetings the problem gets more critical. These think tank experts always have trouble making a decision.