Afghanistan and FNMI Initiatives

Harper has announced that Canada has extended its commitment to keep troops in Afghanistan until 2014. By the end of its expeditionary mission to that country Canada will have spent over 30 billion dollars, lost just less than 150 lives and accomplished nothing of any lasting substance. Committing our troops to a mission in Afghanistan will have as little long term impact on the local or global situation as Canada’s military participation during the Boer War. Today, we continue to squander billions of dollars, Canadian military lives, and have made a mockery of the role of Parliament in approving the extension of foreign expeditions. Sadly, we have passed up an opportunity to close the growing gap between mainstream Canadians and our indigenous peoples by our commitment to remain in Afghanistan in order to fight an ill-conceived war by ineffective means.

Could the 30 billion dollars we shall spend in Afghanistan by 2014 have been better allocated to deal with First Nation, Métis and Inuit training, infrastructure and housing needs at home? The Kelowna Accord with FNMI leaders would have allocated about 5 billion to deal with our internal need to upgrade the living standards of Canada’s indigenous population. The five-year, $5-billion plan set targets to improve education, housing, economic development, health and water services, and detailed how money would be spent along the way. When the accord fell to the wayside, so did any forward momentum in addressing those needs. Today more than 100 aboriginal communities do not have access to clean drinking water. There are 27,000 aboriginal youth living away from their parents due to poverty, aboriginal incarceration rates are rising and the gap between aboriginal and non-aboriginal Canadians continues to widen as the demand for adequate housing and educational facilities increases. In short, we have intentionally squandered an opportunity to address our own nation building needs by signing up for an ill conceived Afghanistan adventure. After nine years of involvement we have absolutely nothing to show as an achievement.

The billions squandered in Afghanistan was not just for maintaining our troops but was also spent to enrich Karzai family members, corrupt Ministers and the key warlords in most of the 28 districts in the country. We failed to train any significant number of locals in carpentry, masonry, public utilities, medical services, local municipal services, waste and water management, or educational training work. We failed to assist Afghans to transform their educational and training institutions at every level. Today, over 70% of the population is either unemployed, illiterate or has received no training in any career or profession. Women and children are still raped and abused. Our greatest accomplishment has been to enrich the warlords, Karzai family members and their allies, and all those involved in the opium trade. Business in the illicit drug trade is at an all time high thanks to the protection of foreign troops.

How could the billions have been better spent? If Canada had heeded Marshall Mc Luhan’s insights on the impact of mass media and technology on the thinking of populations, we would have trained a few thousand Afghanis among each of the country’s minority groups to operate radio, television, cyber chat lines, newspapers and surveillance cameras 24/7 in Afghanistan. These local media people would be trained, at a cost of less than one billion dollars, to use the latest technology to communicate to their local peer groups in culturally savvy ways. Rather than spend millions each week to keep our Leopard tanks on the road to nowhere, we could give everyone radios, TVs and training tools at discount prices. If we had spent less than a billion dollars on a career and technology development strategy, Afghans would be hearing their own trained people, on a 24/7 basis, talk about their cultural, religious and training needs. A mass media strategy would have provided a lasting opportunity to transform a society and train people to help themselves in all walks of life. A mass media strategy that provided both electronic information and training opportunities across Afghanistan would have done more to genuinely win the hearts and minds of both men and women across each district of the country than our current policies of cat and mouse troop placements. If we had adopted a vigorous mass communications strategy, media messages would have gone out in the local dialects to homes and public institutions. Afghan media personalities could have made more transparent and transformative the workings of government services, educational and other institutions in the society. Also, a 24/7 media strategy could have exposed the gross corruption and criminality among government officials and the various Taliban factions. Less Afghan men living in far off communities would be clueless as to the struggle that is currently being waged in Afghanistan. In a recent survey, the overwhelming numbers of Afghans claim not to know why foreign troops are in the country.

The Afghan people could be reminded that the best way to get the foreigners out is for them to get training in a multitude of trades, services and professions. Instead, most of the billions upon billions spent by foreign governments maintain over 150,000 foreign troops, private security forces and non-governmental support staffs chasing a few thousand local Taliban. Whereas it costs us over a million dollars to kill or capture one Taliban, it cost them less than one thousand dollars to equip and maintain fighters in the field or to ensure that a suicide bomber carries out his work on a mere bicycle. Harper has informed us that our new military mission is no longer one of combat but one of training the country’s police and government officials. What makes us think we will do a better job at training police and a new Afghan army, when most of the conscripts are handpicked loyalists of the Karzai family or this or that warlord?

We are wasting a billion dollars per year on our Afghanistan expedition in order to achieve nothing of any lasting substance. Our unique reputation as UN Peacekeepers and our influence in our own backyard has eroded. Canada’s resources could have been used at home to close the worsening gap between Canadians and our indigenous peoples. Our military engineers could have built roads and airports in our North to get our goods and services to China, Asia and Russia over our Arctic space by new, cheaper and quicker routes. We could have built the infrastructure and thousands of new homes across our over seven hundred FNMI communities. We could have promoted innovations in Green Technology or created the world’s biggest domestic fish hatchery in the Hudson’s Bay. We could have trained our own FNMI populations to defend our home and native land and even have funds left over to help Haiti in our own Hemisphere. Mc Luhan and Pearson must be turning over in their graves!

UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the Magna Carta

The rule of universal law, informed consent and rights of the governed have their roots in the Magna Carta of 1215. The UN Declaration on Indigenous Peoples is a Magna Carta for all indigenous peoples. However, unlike the original Magna Carta this Declaration must go beyond fine principles and deal with concrete minimum rights and responsibilities. Like the original Magna Carta of 1215, this UN Declaration needs to be reworked and reframed to suit the rights of an evolving indigenous population. The Current UN Declaration has less teeth and substance than its original, the Magna Carta of 1215. It is a baby that must be nurtured by indigenous leaders through renewed and current treaties, agreements and MOUs with the descendants of a State.

The four English-speaking countries, whose whole legal system grew out of the agreement negotiated by King John of England and the English Lords, delayed, for almost 20 years, before reluctantly approving the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. This November 2010 UN Declaration impacts on the rights of almost 400 million aboriginal peoples who have or still seek formal agreements, treaties or are still brutally subject to the arbitrary dictates of a non-indigenous State.  

Like King John in 1215, Canada, USA, New Zealand and Australia want their 21^st Century aboriginal/indigenous peoples to continue to submit to the rights and prerogatives of their State or Ruler over the inherent rights of the indigenous populations that they rule. Like King John, the Executives of these States want to dominate and control as much as possible the right to self-governance and self-determination. King John reluctantly signed the Charter that gave the Nobles and peoples that had been conquered almost 200 hundred years earlier, individual rights and specific processes that outlined the rights and obligations on the part of the Ruler and the Ruled. The Magna Carta created an incentive for the Ruler and the Ruled to share power, rights in decision-making and consent by the governed. The Magna Carta and its successors provided for peoples interests to receive a voice and consideration. As with today’s States, King John and his heirs delayed in carrying out the full spirit and intent of those original power sharing agreements in various aspects of daily life. Some of what was signed in 1215 was not applied until it was revised and clarified in 1297 and subsequently when commoners earned the right to gather in Parliament. At any rate, the Magna Carta of 1215 gradually redressed the imbalances between the Ruler and the Ruled and set limits to the prerogatives of the Ruler until successive elected Parliaments and Constitutional arrangements brought about the current practices at all four counties- Canada, USA, New Zealand and Australia.

The descendants and subject peoples who benefited from the Magna Carta are reluctant to share with their own indigenous peoples the powers and rights they won from their Rulers. Even today in Canada, the State could arbitrarily relocate whole communities or deprive them of the same services and benefits of their non-aboriginal counterparts. As part of the official record, Canada's UN Ambassador wanted it noted that Canada was not ceding any rights to rule and dominate its own aboriginal populations. He wanted it noted that the UN Declaration on Indigenous Peoples would not change any current practices toward the First Nation, Métis, and Inuit peoples on how to deal with such outstanding issues as

·         Inherent or negotiated rights to lands, territories and access to resources;

·         free, prior and informed consent when used as a veto;

·         self-government without recognition of the importance of negotiations;

·         intellectual property;

·         military issues related to indigenous rights; and,

·         The need to achieve an appropriate balance between the rights and obligations of Indigenous peoples, member States and third parties.

While Canada's concerns regarding the text of the Declaration remain unchanged, Canada has finally endorsed the Declaration. As the federal government pointed out, “Although the declaration does not reflect customary international law nor change Canadian laws, in endorsing the Declaration, Canada reaffirms its commitment to build on a positive and productive relationship with First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples to improve the well-being of Aboriginal Canadians, based on our shared history, respect, and a desire to move forward together”.

As with the Nobles of Old England, Indigenous leaders need to get down to specifics and need to find ways to get the active participation of its indigenous peoples. All those indigenous leaders who went to Geneva and later New York to make their case for creation of this UN Declaration know that the real work and struggle for equal and shared rights needs to continue. This is a grand opportunity for the Federal Government to negotiate outstanding treaties, negotiate a more realistic sharing of resources above or below ground, sweet water and sea beds.

Canada exists today due to the past and current contributions of its indigenous peoples. Yet treaties or agreements are still delayed even to this day. The Dakota of Manitoba fought for the British Crown against American incursions in the War of 1812 and like the Blackfoot to the west of them remained loyal. Still these indigenous peoples have yet to be acknowledged for their allegiance, sacrifices in war or their contributions to the formation of Canada. Canada needs to do more than just sign the UN Declaration. It must get into the spirit and intent of the UN Declaration. It must stop offering apologies for its forced relocations of people, its seizure of children from parents, its efforts to scatter indigenous peoples by adoption or underfunding of aboriginal communities and institutions. Canada needs to renew its commitment to negotiate modern treaties and agreements that meet the international standards of informed consent, treaties of mutual benefits to all peoples, and demonstrate an economic sharing of lands and resources that account for the possibilities of multiple uses for the same piece of aboriginal lands.

We are well beyond fine words, well crafted apologies or more declarations. Concrete actions are desperately needed. We must work with indigenous peoples to have their voices and rights entrenched in practical everyday practices as was done to the subject peoples of English monarchs.

Let the dialogue between indigenous peoples and the State rulers begin. The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples needs teeth and substance. The Age of Apologies and Declarations need to give way to concrete and negotiated mutual rights, mutual freedoms and mutual benefits. As will all peoples, Indigenous Peoples have as much inherent human rights to govern themselves and enter into agreements by consent as did the nobles and commoners involved with the original Magna Carta.

Rare Earth, Environmentalists and Innovations

How times have changed in the world of rare earth ores production and Western know how! Currently, for rare earth ores needed to propel the Green Revolution, most roads lead to China’s almost one hundred rare earth mines.

Rare Earth Elements (REE) are important in the production of many everyday technological products as well as a host of green technologies including hybrid cars, solar panels, and windmills. High-technology industries rely heavily on the availability of these 17 elements - such as scandium, yttrium, and cerium - but combination of low cost high tech products and rapid technological advances has led to an explosion of demand over the past two decades. China currently produces some 97 percent of the worldwide supply of rare earths. Deng Xiaoping, supreme leader at the time that China decided to adopt capitalist ways, once observed that the Mideast had oil, but China had rare earth elements. As the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries has done with oil, China is now starting to flex its muscle.

While Harper and other western leaders entertained us by lecturing the Chinese, scoffing at their developing economy as mere catch up manufacturing efforts or scolding them for being among the world’s major polluters, they were quietly transforming their society, absorbing all the manufacturing and processing technologies which the West wanted to outsource and quietly implementing their plans to be leaders in the production of rare earth and application of the Green Revolution Technologies.

It is just too easy for Canadians and western governments, environmentalists and natural resources businesses to blame China for the current crisis of unbalances in economic trade exchanges. Some pundits blame Chinese duplicity for the theft of commercial patents and processes and its unfair monetary practices. Little is said as to how our governments, businesses and researchers aided and abetted the mass transfer of innovations and jobs to China, India and South Korea. We have paid too little attention to the export of jobs and technologies and spent too much time at a fruitless tug-of-war among resource/mining companies, environmentalists, researchers in the resource Labs vs. University research centers. During the interminable tug-of-war among western governments, businesses and environmental advocates, Canadians and Albertans have failed to meet the challenges of the tar sands, mining reclamation projects or to deal with the health issues related to major resource extraction and manufacturing.

In the West, we have quibbled, dithered and procrastinated in meeting the challenges of the Green Energy Revolution while China, India, South Korea and Malaysia transformed their societies. In Alberta and elsewhere we have failed to work collaboratively and proactively to tackle the needs to extract natural resources, rare earth ores and yet deal with the pollution and health and environmental issues. We squander billions of dollars on military toys and wasteful adventures but refuse to bring the various players and critics together to meet the challenges of the new green energy revolution. The surprisingly rapid progression from self-sufficiency prior to about 1990 to nearly complete dependence on imports from a single country today involves a number of disturbing factors. These include much lower labor and regulatory costs in China than in the United States or Canada; continued expansion of electronics and other manufacturing in Asia; the favorable number, size, and REE content of Chinese deposits at its 100 or more mines; and the ongoing environmental and regulatory problems at Mountain Pass. China now dominates world REE markets. What are American, Albertan and Canadian stakeholders prepared to do to extract rare earths or develop innovative technologies? Do we have enough incentives for our geologist’s or mining companies to take up the challenge at our park reserves or land base?

Unfortunately, even with the new green reality facing us, we refuse to stop our never ending tug-of-war about acceptable levels of pollution or global warming. In the meantime, China built a city dedicated to the investigation and production of rare earth minerals and its applications. It is expanding its research laboratories and creating post secondary institutions totally dedicated to the extraction, production and application of rare earth elements that are the whole basis of the new technologies, new sources of energy, and an answer to combat global pollution. In the 1990s, the United States was the largest rare-earths-producing country, followed by China, Australia, India, Russia, Malaysia, Brazil, Sweden, Republic of Congo, South Africa, Mozambique, Nigeria, North Korea, Sri Lanka and Thailand. Except for one primary mine at California’s Mohave Desert, most rare earth ores are now produced and exported by China. In 2002, the US shut down its only major mine for an extended period due to concerns about pollution and tailing byproducts that polluted the environment. The Chinese leaders and innovators have an authoritarian one party system with a command economy model. In its pursuit to corner the rare earths market it not opened mines in China but also in Africa. We in Canada and Alberta must bring together the various forces and institutions that are currently in a tug-of-war to deal with the new challenges to our economic existence and our quality of life.

What are these rare earth elements and why have they become so important to the Green Energy Revolution espoused by all governments, new businesses and environmentalists?

In response to the growing challenges in securing and developing rare earth applications, the Americans have created REITA:  Rare Earth Industry and Technology Association. Much of the technical data in this article was gleaned from its website.

The rare-earth elements are defined as a group of chemical elements composed of scandium, yttrium, and the lanthanides. The lanthanides are a group of 15 chemically similar elements with atomic numbers 57 through 71, inclusive. Although not a lanthanide; yttrium, atomic number 39, is included in the rare earths because it often occurs with them in nature, having similar chemical properties. Scandium, atomic number 21, is also included in the group, although it typically occurs in rare- earths ores only in minor amounts because of its smaller atomic and ionic size.

The three major groups of rare-earth elements (scandium, yttrium, and the lanthanides) are extracted from production derived from the rare-earth ores; bastnasite, monazite, xenontime, and ion-adsorption clay. Bastnasite is the world's principal source of rare earth elements and is produced principally in China and the United States. Significant quantities of rare earths are also recovered from the mineral monazite. Xenotime and ion-adsorption clays account for a much smaller part of the total production but are important sources of yttrium and other heavy-group rare earths.

Domestic mine production of bastnasite during the 1970's and 1980's showed an overall increase. Most companies increased their ore and separated product capacities during the period to meet growing demand, especially since rare earths were used in the color televisions and magnets for new technological gadgets such as VCR, compact CD players and new computers. Principal uses for the rare earths are in petroleum fluid cracking catalysts; metallurgical applications; glass polishing compounds; glass additives; permanent magnets; catalytic converter materials; and television, lighting, and X-ray intensifying phosphors. Price increases until the end of the 1980s were tied primarily to adjustments for inflation and increased operating costs since the Japanese and Americans monopolized the marketing and production of the new high tech applications. In 1982, competing groups of scientists around the world found a way to combine iron and boron with a somewhat rare earth called neodymium to make extremely powerful and lightweight magnets. These magnets quickly found a market in computer hard drives, high-quality microphones and speakers, automobile starter motors, and the guidance systems of smart bombs. The Japanese government helped its business wing corner the supply chain for rare earth materials as it ramped up its storage facilities, application research options and variety of new products using these rare materials. In the meantime, Americans overhauled their military weapons and guided missile systems and applications that needed the very same rare earth elements. Gradually in the 1980's, demand shifted away from mixed rare-earths products, such as mischmetal and mixed compounds, to higher value individual high-purity products need for military and new hi-tech consumers.

Until the recent Bush economic recession, there was confidence in the West and Japan that they would dominate the world of new technologies and that rare earths needed to make these technologies would be readily available. However, American businesses in mining, research, production and manufacturing began to export manufacturing and resource processing jobs overseas as environmentalists raised this or that objection to mining and natural resource extraction, the transfer of resource operations and processes were done with a wink and a nod from our own governments. The reasoning was that if these dirty technologies and processes were exported we could simply buy the products and not worry about the objections of environmentalists. Why invest in research and development of new resource applications or processes when we could put funds in banks and increase our Heritage Fund or spend the billions needed to invest in new mining processes on new defense toys or adventures in Afghanistan?

Only in the last five years, have most western governments, university researchers or mining businesses expressed concerns about the growing cost and rising demand in rare earth elements. You see, between 1985 and 2005, American and western mining companies and car manufactures began to export jobs and technologies overseas to China, India and Malaysia. Today, France and Germany have signed major agreements to export airplane technology to China. The movement in the West to export manufacturing jobs and new technologies is due to a misguided belief that by exporting “dirty” manufacturing jobs and technologies, the vast consumer markets of Asia would open up trade opportunities for the West.

A classic case of the Western job and technology transfer is General Motors. In the 1980s, it began to manufacture magnets based on the rare earth elements but then by 1995 it decided to sell its interests in the new technology division to a consortium of three firms, two of which were a pair of Chinese companies — San Huan New Material High-Tech Inc. and China National Nonferrous Metals. Both firms were partly owned by the Chinese government. The heads of these two Chinese companies are the spouses of the first and second daughters of Deng Xiaoping, then the supreme leader of China.

In fact, Chinese leaders recognized the strategic value of its REE resources long before the days of Deng Xiaoping. With skill, patience and investment China quietly transformed the Rare Earth industry into what it is today. It also began to corner the market in its overseas mining and resource initiatives while we squandered billions on military adventures or military toys. China filled the vacuum left in Africa by the West. We can remediate the current situation but it will take a massive commitment on the part of environmentalists, government and businesses. Exporting or slowing down dirty jobs or using various public relations strategies to deceive the public is not enough. We need to harness the ingenuity of innovators, post-secondary institutions environmentalists and policy-makers. The blame games in our tug of wars among stakeholders is crippling our economic abilities to take advance of extraction of our natural resources as well as of what the rare earth applications have to offer in raising our standard of living.

The Clinton administration agreed to the GM sale of the new technology under the condition that the new owners keep the production and technology in the United States. The new Chinese owners began to buy factories in the United States including GA Powders, an Idaho firm that used government money to develop a monopoly on the production powerful methods. Then, the Chinese company shut down American production and moved everything to China. This example is taken from David Cay Johnston’s. 2007. Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (And Stick You With The Bill) (New York: 2007), pg 36-39.

It gets even better - the Americans actually helped the Chinese bolster and modernize the Chinese State Science and Technology Commission, which had the responsibility for acquiring military technology by any means. If you follow developments leading to this week’s G-20 Summit, you can learn how France, Germany, Italy, Britain and the US firms and governments are doing the very same things of exporting technologies and jobs in the hope of opening the vast markets of China, India, Malaysia and South Korea. To date, the major western governments and businesses to benefit from these types of job and technology transfers between East and West have been the ruling class and merchants of medieval Venice and 19^th Century Britain. However, the city state of Venice benefited greatly in its trade relations and exchange of technologies and processes. Now, that was a rare trade imbalance that greatly favored the West.

By exporting its manufacturing and transferring the new technology, one of the keys to Green Technology is literally buried in China. This Chinese dominance has only recently received media attention since Japan began to sound the alarm about China’s monopoly in rare earth production, research and application. While the US has its Silicon Valley, China has a city and many institutions totally dedicated to extraction, research and development of rare earth materials. Japan sounded the alarm only when the Chinese stopped exporting even a gram of rare earth following the recent brouhaha due to the arrest of a Chinese fishing boat captain and the Chinese arrest of Japanese fishermen.

The Americans and Europeans are complaining about the trade imbalances with China but no leaders in industry or government want to own up to how they actively assisted in the outsourcing of jobs, technology and processing techniques. It seems that, over the centuries, out of all the western businessmen and governments have had trade missions to China only the Venetians and some Italian traders got a better deal. The Medieval Italians shared a few western gadgets and in turn brought back the spices and technologies that spawned the armaments trade (Pistoia made pistols and armaments based on powder) and Venice and other Italian cities made spaghetti and new types of “China” products for sale across Europe and beyond etc.

Now that the Japanese have sounded the alarm, three facts are bringing awareness of the looming rare earth shortage to the attention of mainstream media, resource businesses and policy-makers. First, the US, Japan and the West are now totally dependent on China for the export of these rare metals. Second, these minerals are crucial for the development of high technology research, application and new jobs, including both military and so-called green technologies.

The point I want to make is that in Canada and the West, we need to stop the tug-of-war and create collaborative and exploratory initiatives among governments, resource businesses, environmentalists and academia. We can usher in the new technology by promoting innovative policy-making, innovative green technology and rare earth research in our graduate schools, and a more open and proactive mind among our environmentalists. If we do not stop the tug-of-war we shall continue to lament about Alberta’s and Saskatchewan’s mining and tar sand initiatives. Canadians need to grapple with the new Green Technology by pressuring our federal and provincial governments to allocate funds for research at universities and private laboratories and developing or applying the new patents that can help extract gas and oil efficiently while proactively dealing with the environmental and health concerns of trappers, rural and aboriginal communities living near natural resources.

Canada has the second largest landmass and yet our governments, environmentalists, researchers and resource companies have not actively taken up the challenge to develop coordinate strategies and policies for seeking out rare earth elements and developing new applications that promote the Green Technologies Revolution. Canada spent billions of dollars on armaments that could not neutralize a $50 landmine. While the Chinese were transforming their society and cornering the market for the production, research and application of rare minerals, our Prime Minister and governments were insulting, publically scolding both China and India and even mocking their abilities to transform these ancient societies into the economic and innovative powerhouses of the 21st century.

Some Applications of the Rare Earth Elements

The diverse nuclear, metallurgical, chemical, catalytic, electrical, magnetic, and optical properties of the REE have led to an ever increasing variety of applications. These uses range from mundane (lighter flints, glass polishing) to high-tech (phosphors, lasers, magnets, batteries, magnetic refrigeration) to futuristic (high-temperature superconductivity, safe storage and transport of hydrogen for a post-hydrocarbon economy).

Many applications of REE are characterized by high specificity and high unit value. For example, color cathode-ray tubes and liquid-crystal displays used in computer monitors and televisions employ europium as the red phosphor; no substitute is known. Owing to relatively low abundance and high demand, Eu is quite valuable—$250 to $1,700/kg (for Eu₂O₃) over the past decade.

Fiber-optic telecommunication cables provide much greater bandwidth than the copper wires and cables they have largely replaced. Fiber-optic cables can transmit signals over long distances because they incorporate periodically spaced lengths of erbium-doped fiber that function as laser amplifiers. Er is used in these laser repeaters, despite its high cost (~$700/kg), because it alone possesses the required optical properties.

Permanent magnet technology has been revolutionized by alloys containing Nd, Sm, Gd, Dy, or Pr. Small, lightweight, high-strength REE magnets have allowed miniaturization of numerous electrical and electronic components used in appliances, audio and video equipment, computers, automobiles, communications systems, and military gear. Many recent technological innovations already taken for granted (for example, miniaturized multi-gigabyte portable disk drives and DVD drives) would not be possible without REE magnets.

Environmental applications of REE have increased markedly over the past two decades. This trend will undoubtedly continue, given growing concerns about global warming and energy efficiency. Several REE are essential constituents of both petroleum fluid cracking catalysts and automotive pollution-control catalytic converters. Use of REE magnets reduces the weight of automobiles. Widespread adoption of new energy-efficient fluorescent lamps (using Y, La, Ce, Eu, Gd, and Tb) for institutional lighting could potentially achieve reductions in U.S. carbon dioxide emissions equivalent to removing one-third of the automobiles currently on the road. Large-scale application of magnetic-refrigeration technology (described below) also could significantly reduce energy consumption and CO₂ emissions.

In many applications, REE are advantageous because of their relatively low toxicity. For example, the most common types of rechargeable batteries contain either cadmium (Cd) or lead. Rechargeable lanthanum-nickel-hydride (La-Ni-H) batteries are gradually replacing Ni-Cd batteries in computer and communications applications and could eventually replace lead-acid batteries in automobiles. Although more expensive, La-Ni-H batteries offer greater energy density, better charge-discharge characteristics, and fewer environmental problems upon disposal or recycling. As another example, red and red-orange pigments made with La or Ce are superseding traditional commercial pigments containing Cd or other toxic heavy metals.

The next high-technology application of the REE to achieve maturity may be magnetic refrigeration. This new technology could be employed in refrigerators, freezers, and residential, commercial, and automotive air conditioners. Magnetic refrigeration is considerably more efficient than gas-compression refrigeration and does not require refrigerants that are flammable or toxic, deplete the Earth’s ozone layer, or contribute to global warming.

I have emphasized the need for all stakeholders in Alberta and Canada to seek out rare earth elements through a coordinated processing strategy that unites policy-makers, environmentalists and innovators in both private and public research laboratories. Also, our Education Ministries must overhaul our provincial science and CTS offerings at the high school and post-secondary levels in order to create a class of innovators who can contribute to the growing Green Energy Technologies so vital to our environmental and current employment challenges. It is this or international currency wars among nations that will close down the global economy, raise trading and trigger a currency war.