What power can rare-earths wield?
THE FUTURIAN #5
Kapena and Tobias looked at each other. Was it true what their teacher was saying? Just before Christmas, in their last middle school year, they learnt of the great power rivalry in and around their Pacific island home. And now, in this history class they were being shown a world map and how the balance of power had recently shifted. All because, the teacher said, of some rare earths found deep in the ocean.
During the first half of the 2020s, words such as yttrium, neodymium and terbium barely made the news. Back then, it was only lithium and cobalt that were associated with the new energy revolution in the general public’s consciousness. People knew that you needed copper for all the renewable electricity, and lithium to store it in large batteries. Fewer still realised that cobalt played a critical part in electric vehicle batteries. But that was about it. Apart from the smattering of news articles about new uses of say erbium and gadolinium, and the odd book about the importance of specific rare earth elements and their combination in rare earth minerals such as cerite and monazite, the topic of rare earths was limited to government bureaucrats, academic conferences and industry analysts.
But now, in the mid 2030’s, it seemed everyone knew about these very special and unique metals. Neodymium, used in wind farm…
