The US has an abundance of rare earth and many other metals, substantially more than all but a few other countries. Aggressive and cynical environmental activism that buries mine development in decades of lawsuits has made it financially infeasible to develop domestic resources to the point where even mineral exploration is rarely done in the US anymore. No point in exploring for minerals if you won’t be allowed to mine them.
In principle, metal refineries are not that difficult to build and operate. It isn’t rocket science and could be done relatively quickly if the US really wanted to. In practice, any attempt at doing so will be buried in decades of cynical blocking actions by political activists. It wouldn’t be surprising to find out the parties blocking this are substantially albeit indirectly supported by adversarial countries.
It is no different than why we can’t build housing. Unless the US adopts an attitude of telling the haters to go pound sand because building things is important to the furtherance of civilization, nothing will happen.
We as a culture and society give veto power over damn near everything to far too many people that couldn’t be trusted with authority over a lemonade stand.
In principle, metal refineries are not that difficult to build and operate. It isn’t rocket science and could be done relatively quickly if the US really wanted to. In practice, any attempt at doing so will be buried in decades of cynical blocking actions by political activists. It wouldn’t be surprising to find out the parties blocking this are substantially albeit indirectly supported by adversarial countries.
It is no different than why we can’t build housing. Unless the US adopts an attitude of telling the haters to go pound sand because building things is important to the furtherance of civilization, nothing will happen.
We as a culture and society give veto power over damn near everything to far too many people that couldn’t be trusted with authority over a lemonade stand.