
Niobium crystals


Rare earths — a block of seventeen elements in the middle of the Periodic Table (pictured below) — aren’t actually all that rare, but they tend to be very hard to obtain commercially. Generally, rare earth elements are only found in minute quantities in mineral deposits of clay, sand, and rock (earths!), which must then be processed to extract the rare metals — an expensive process, and also costly for the environment as billions of tons of ore must be mined and refined to yield just a few tons of usable rare earths.

Many rare earths are also geochemically rare — they can only be mined in a handful of countries. This is simply down to Mother Nature being a tempestuous so-and-so: Some countries have deposits of rare earths, and some don’t. This results in massively skewed production (China famously produces 97% of the world’s rare earth metals), and, as you can imagine, a lot of national security and geopolitical troubles, too.

Rare earth elements, in the Periodic TableIt doesn’t stop with rare earths, either: Many other important elements, such as platinum, are only available from one or two mines in the entire world. If South Africa sustained a huge earthquake — or was on the receiving end of a thermonuclear bomb, perhaps — the world’s supply of platinum would literally dry up over night. The continued existence of technologies that rely on platinum, like car exhaust catalytic converters and fuel cells, would be unlikely.

If geochemistry and politics weren’t enough, though, we even have to factor in ethical concerns: Just like blood/conflict diamonds — diamonds that originate from war-torn African nations, where forced labor is used and the proceeds go towards buying more weapons for the warlord — some rare metals could be considered “blood metals.” Tantalum, an element that’s used to make the capacitors found in almost every modern computer, is extracted from coltan — and the world’s second largest producer of coltan is the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the home of the bloodiest wars since World War II. Not only do the proceeds from coltan exports get spent on weapons, but the main focus of the wars were the stretches of land rich in diamonds and coltan.

Also along the same humanist vein, it’s important to note that extracting these rare elements is usually a very expensive and disruptive activity. Indium, probably the single most important element for the manufacture of LCDs and touchscreens, is recovered in minute quantities as a byproduct of zinc extraction. You can’t just set up an indium plant; you have to produce zinc in huge quantities, find buyers and arrange transport for that zinc, and then go to town on producing indium. In short, extracting rare elements is generally a very intensive task that is likely to disrupt or destroy existing settlements and businesses.

Next page: The rare earth apocalypse