The Rare Earths Era: Strategic Metals Dependency & World Order

by Juan Manuel Chomon

The Rare Earths Strategic Metals Dependency & World Order addresses the centrality of 17 rare metallic elements necessary to the manufacture of a vast panoply of products developed through modern technology and in use worldwide—from smartphones, televisions, computers, and medical scanners to components of the most modern weapons systems in Western arsenals. Rare earths are hence crucial to strategic planning, whether for business, combating climate change, warfare, or ascendancy in world order.Called "rare earths" because of the low concentration in which they are found, which makes their extraction polluting and difficult, the miraculous properties of these elements can endow other materials with an unalterable super magnetism, an amazing hardness or robustness, a unique luminescence or fluorescence, and a special conductivity. The world as we now experience, enjoy and understand it is absolutely dependent on access to these metals in order to produce today's technology. Without that, it's goodbye to modernity.Rare earths may be key to understanding some of the most pressing geopolitical issues of our time. This book addresses the following * How did the world become so dependent and addicted to Chinese rare earth metals?* Will critical minerals provide China with geopolitical leverage?* How will the global needs for rare earths impact the transition to clean energy?* What is the environmental impact of rare earths?* What is the role of the strategic minerals in the de-dollarization process?* Will we see new wars over rare earths resources?* Are critical minerals really on the radar of Western politicians?

Genres: China

361 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 1, 2020

Reviews

[Hugh Sharman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Juan Manuel Chomón's book is a "must buy" for any grown-up concerned for the perilous times during which we are living. He is a military pilot with the rank of Lt Colonel and is also deeply involved in military strategical issues.
He has done a prodigious amount of research into all aspects of the strategic metals on which so much of modern civilisation depends, especially the so-called rare earth metals, most of which many of us, even energy specialists, like this reader, of many years standing, are unfamiliar.
Crucially, he exposes, in a very readable way, the overwhelming dominance of China, in the ownership of the natural resources, all over the World, where the metals and other minerals which are vital for modern and future societies, can be identified and mined from.
Furthermore, the scientists and engineers who dominate and control China's ruling, rather weird "Communist" Party, long ago foresaw that a Globally dominant control of these resources and the technologies for refining these and inventing applications from their use, will accelerate China's dominance of the Global economy.
Mr Chomón is clearly a highly civilized and educated military officer, who moves around at the very top governmental organizations of modern Europe. Rightly therefore, he is deeply anxious for the destruction of the environment caused by mining, refining and transporting these minerals from where they are found, mostly in poor nations to China or (nearly always) Chinese owned processing and manufacturing plants.
North America, and much more so, European societies are only just beginning to recognise how their own financial and military prowess is permanently, in this very finite World, being eclipsed as their overly bureaucratic and scientifically ignorant, if democratically elected "leaders" fall far behind China’s
Just a thought! Are we, 14% of the World’s population today living in the old OECD, heading towards another Lehman Bros-type crash? If so, we will likely need China's commercial might, not least with respect to its ownership of these key global resources, to save our civilisations.
Thank you, Mr Chomón!