In October, Australia signed an A$13 billion rare earths and critical minerals agreement with the United States. This is designed to boost supply of minerals vital to everything from military technology to clean energy.
Australia has large reserves of many of these minerals, while the US is trying to find alternative supplies after China gained a stranglehold on much of the global supply.
But there’s a sting in the tail. To date, Australia hasn’t produced many of these elements domestically, preferring to mine the ores here and do the highly polluting processing overseas. Turning ores into minerals comes with a host of pollution issues, from radioactive waste to dangerous chemicals.
