Democrats’ time for magical energy thinking is over
By Michael McKenna October 23, 2021
Unfortunately for the United States, one of its political parties has become the home of magical thinking about energy. Here’s a hint: It’s not the Republicans.
Despite the Biden administration’s hopes to create a world in which solar panels and wind turbines power an all-electric automobile fleet, just last week, President Biden announced that the administration is considering a 20-year delay of new mining operations in northern Minnesota. These new mines eventually will produce copper, nickel and cobalt, all of which are essential minerals in manufacturing electric vehicles, batteries and transmission lines.
Apparently, no one told Mr. Biden that the administration’s entire energy policy is built on copper, nickel and cobalt. By delaying the mines, Team Biden is making communist China richer and Americans poorer. They are trading our energy independence for reliance on China for minerals, a dependence that may be far greater than any we ever had on the Middle East for oil.
At its worst, we imported less than a quarter of our oil from the Middle East. Right now, China owns or controls about 80% of the rare earth minerals on the planet.
Republican Rep. Pete Stauber from Minnesota was clear. “Rather than promoting the dignity of work, they’re comfortable seeing Minnesota’s union members and skilled workers sidelined. Instead of empowering Minnesotans to develop the minerals necessary for almost every sector of our economy under the strongest labor and environmental standards in the world, they are willing to rely on hostile nations that utilize child slave labor and terrible environmental practices.” He’s right.
In a very candid interview with conservative Mark Levin on Sunday, the former commander of British troops in Afghanistan, Colonel Richard Kemp, said that President Joe Biden had single-handedly destroyed NATO’s credibility and had betrayed the United States and the U.S. military, for which he “should be court-martialed.”
“In my opinion, and I don’t say this lightly, and I’ve never said it about anybody else, any other leader in this position, people have been talking about impeaching President Biden,” said Col. Kemp on FNC’sLife, Liberty & Levin.
“I don’t believe President Biden should be impeached,” he added. “He’s the commander-in-chief of the U.S. Armed Forces, who’s just essentially surrendered to the Taliban. He shouldn’t be impeached; he should be court-martialed for betraying the United States of America and the United States Armed Forces.”
Colonel Kemp was an infantry battalion commanding officer and he headed Operation Fingal in Afghanistan in 2003. Kemp also served in the Iraq war, the Bosnian war, the Gulf war, and in battles against terrorists in Northern Ireland (Operation Banner). He was awarded the Commander of the Order of the British Empire and the Queen’s Commendation for Bravery.
During the Aug. 22 interview, Levin asked, “Colonel Kemp, my question to you is, given what has taken place now in Afghanistan, and it’s ongoing, and assuming that Joe Biden stays on the same course, what are consequences for the United States, Britain, NATO, the free world, and that area of the world now?”
Kemp replied, “I think the consequences of what has just happened and what’s still happening are absolutely devastating for the whole of the Western world. I mentioned earlier that the catastrophic effect on NATO. NATO is a very important military alliance.”
In the course of hectoring the United States for its “bungled and embarrassing withdraw from Afghanistan” on Thursday, China’s state-run Global Times admitted Beijing has a rapacious interest in Afghanistan’s vast rare-earths mineral resources and snarled it was none of America’s business if China makes deals with the Taliban to get what it wants.
The Global Times accused the U.S. of profiteering from Afghanistan for the past twenty years, without offering any theories on where all the plunder might have gone, and claimed America is only worried about China going after those mineral resources because the U.S. is jealous:
It has been known for years that Afghanistan is rich in rare earth and other very valuable minerals. Has Biden in his hasty ill planned retreat from Afghanistan thought at all about attempting to protect this vast source of sought after minerals for the benefit of the Afghan people? Or as will probably happen, the Taliban warlords and the Chinese will gain control. I swear, everything that man touches turns to you know what !!!! Nancy P.S. By the way, this article was written in May of this year when the Biden administration knew they would be pulling out of Afghanistan. Why in the world wasn’t more thought given to a better plan for withdrawal. It is my understanding that the we pulled out of the Bagram Air Force Base in the dead of night without even giving advance warning to our Afghan allies and our taxpayer funded expensive equipment was left there.
The Great Game over Rare Earth Minerals in Afghanistan
May 29, 2021 | Chandrashekar TS
United States Geological Survey geological survey estimates that Afghanistan may hold 60 million metric tons of copper, 2.2 billion tons of iron ore, and 1.4 million tons of rare earth elements (REEs) such as lanthanum, cerium, neodymium, and veins of aluminium, gold, silver, zinc, mercury, and lithium.
The USGS estimates the Khanneshin deposits in Helmand province will yield 1.1.-1.4 million metric tons of REEs. Some reports estimate Afghanistan REE resources are among the largest on earth.
China has won exploration rights for copper, coal, oil, and lithium deposits across Afghanistan, and there are reports that Beijing won the rights to develop a copper mine by bribing Afghan mining officials.
International Energy Agency report shows that green energy transition is a fantasy because of dependence on key rare minerals
A prestigious intergovernmental organization created by the world’s advanced economies is pointing out the bottleneck in the plans to substitute so-called green energy for hydrocarbon-based energy: the availability of key minerals necessary for battery storage, wind farms, solar panels, and other gizmos necessary for the switchover. Simply put: the world can’t provide the quantity of those minerals that would be necessary, and the environmental and social impact of trying to mine them in sufficient quantities would be devastating.
The cure, in other words, is worse than the disease.
The International Energy Agency is an intergovernmental organization founded by the OECD [Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development] in the wake of the 1973 oil crisis to provide information and policy suggestions to help the advanced economies cope with energy needs. It currently is focused on the green energy transition so desired by many of the world’s most powerful special interests.
The report on minerals is part of a larger project on the green energy transition. Mark P. Mills cites some of its most important findings in the Wall Street Journal.
The IEA assembled a large body of data about a central, and until now largely ignored, aspect of the energy transition: It requires mining industries and infrastructure that don’t exist. Wind, solar and battery technologies are built from an array of “energy transition minerals,” or ETMs, that must be mined and processed. The IEA finds that with a global energy transition like the one President Biden envisions, demand for key minerals such as lithium, graphite, nickel and rare-earth metals would explode, rising by 4,200%, 2,500%, 1,900% and 700%, respectively, by 2040.
