The Coming World War

No, that is not a photo of a bombed out village in southern Iraq, nor of some devastating crater from an earthquake that decimated a village in Mexicali. It's a photo of U.S.-based Molycorp's rare earth metals mine in Mountain Pass, California.

(Their website has some really top-notch greenwashing for your comedic enjoyment.)

The picture comes from an August, 2009 article in Wired magazine about China's stranglehold on the rare earth metals market, those crucial, hard to find elements that are a necessary component to every hi-tech device we people of the 21st Century have come to require.

It's hard to believe, but the stage is currently being set for a large geo-political conflict over the sourcing and distribution of these metals, which are found in everything from iPods and cellphones, to laser-guided nuclear weapons.

Forget "peak oil" and the coming oil wars. (Well, one could argue that the peak has passed and the first wars have already been launched.) It looks like rare earth metals are the resources to watch to keep your thumb on the pulse of global politics.

In an ironic twist of affairs, these metals are also needed for--ahem--green technologies, as this New York Times article points out. So not only is a steady supply of rare earth metals important to keep our military up-to-date, but we need these open pit mines to see that we can put our economy on the sustainable path that Paul Krugman argued for two weeks ago.

What's more, Japan, long known to be a manufacturer of sophisticated technology, is setting the stage for a showdown, along with China and the U.S., for the world's last remaining reserves of rare earth metals. Rare earth metals expert Jack Lifton made the case at "one of Asia’s largest annual investment forums" that consumerism is "doomed," and that a resource war between China and the U.S. is "inevitable."

Wait--so you're telling me that the whole delicate geo-political balance is going to come crashing down over iPhones and GPS tracking devices?

And you're also telling me that green industries, like windfarms and solar panels, are leading to the collapse of the whole consumer-industrial mega-economy?

Open pit mines the size of Delaware might be one problematic side of the Technotopian economic model, but a nuclear holocaust is a whole new ballgame.

If you haven't read the article about Jack Lifton saying "consumerism is doomed," I highly, highly suggest that you do. It really puts a new slant on people hoping to find economic salvation through expanded growth in "technologies industries," especially so-called "green technologies," doesn't it?