China, which has 30% of the world’s rare Earth metals reserves and an unsafe 97% of production has recently embargoed their production.
This is an obscure issue - most people wouldn’t know what the Lanthanides or Actinides are unless they’d had some advanced chemistry, but without access to these strategic minerals we don’t get a smart grid, wind turbines, or solar energy systems.
We simply must start planning ahead. The presence of a market which one can enter and make a living ... or build a fortune ... is a quintessential American principle. But an unregulated market is always rife with corruption. We’ve ‘let the market work’ for over a generation, and it’s worked all of our manufacturing jobs overseas, and now we face the real potential of a shutdown in the flow of a key set of strategic minerals.
We need a national manufacturing policy. We have to be able to build the things we need here, should an oil shock, a climate based disruption, or a regional conflict endanger some key resource or component. Long, fragile supply lines and just in time manufacturing were exposed for the hazards they are by the Icelandic volcano last summer. We can hope for the best, but prudence dictates we should plan for the worst. We don’t do that now.
Energy is the same way. We took a beating during the 1970s oil embargo. If we have that happen today, or even worse a regional conflict in the Persian Gulf interferes with supply, our economy will be an even bigger mess in very short order. We keep just 700 million barrels of oil in reserve - a five week supply. It takes ten years to bring a new oil field into full production.
We have to change both our methods and our expectations. Solar and wind, biofuels where they make sense, and conservation everywhere. This is the only path out of the situation we’re in today, but it demands long term planning if we’re to be successful. We can’t leave the industries of the future prey to the lobbyists of the past and the Congressmen they’ve long since purchased.
My opponent, Joe Barton, is not a man for planning ahead. He does what big oil tells him to do so that they can show a profit this quarter. He can’t think any further ahead than the next election and even that concern is blunted by Texas gerrymandering. Even President Obama has recognized and named my opponent, Joe Barton, as an obstacle to everything he is working on to improve the conditions of the country. If you help me remove him, I’ll help remove the long term hazards to our well being by backing policy that rebuilds our local manufacturing and energy production industries.