I think something a lot less dramatic than a Manhattan Project would get the US rare earth mining industry spun back up PDQ. It just takes an increment of national will.
I think something a lot less dramatic than a Manhattan Project would get the US rare earth mining industry spun back up PDQ. It just takes an increment of national will.
Sounds like a perfect time for a national emergency, put the EPA in time out for a little while.
Re: national will. The American left is anti-American. It would see such a crisis as an opportunity to severely cripple the evil U.S. economy, extort maximum political blackmail on tangentially related subjects, and exploit the crisis to drive U.S. living standards down and government control of the economy up.
The left would rather see the U.S. defense industrial base collapse and the U.S. edge in high tech industries disappear than to permit a single new mine on federal lands in the west. The left is at best indifferent -- and among its "advanced" thinkers, is actively hostile -- to economic growth. Economic decline would increase political pressure for increased redistribution. That ultimately is why the left is so enamored of policies that are economically counterproductive. Leftists don't see a downside.