Their are 3 countries with rare earth minerals China, Australia, and greenland.
What ? Rare earths are everywhere, they are just difficult to extract and toxic as shit to procees, you also always have nuclear waste associated with it that is concentrated in the treatment process.
There’s a reason Lynas set up a plant in Malayasia for thier WA mined ores, they would have been unlikely to get a license way back in the day becase of the toxic shit that comes from processing. They’ve already polluted large parts of the rainforested areas in Malaysia from tailings dam overflows.
Australia’s advantage isn’t it’s massive rare earth windfall, it’s that only a few “black fellas” live in or near vast areas that can be mined, so we just ignore them or throw them a few tokens as we rape and pillage the natural environment. Much of the rest of the world has people living on it.
There are all sorts of mineral deposits across Europe for example, look at Rio’s large proposed Lithium mine in Serbia and the push back, why ? People… and not just indigenous people no one gives a shit about.
Serbia blocked plans for Europe’s biggest lithium mine – a flagship project of Rio Tinto new chief executive – in a dramatic response to local opposition
Fuck cars!
We need more and better public transport.