U.S. energy future depends on rare earth metals: Obama

Lanthanum has become a key component of hybrid car batteries, making it critical to the President's campaign to double the fuel efficiency of the American automobile by 2025 Will a near-monopoly in rare earth metals do for China what oil did for Saudi Arabia? Not if the U.S. government has anything to say about it. President Barack Obama made that clear last week when he joined the European Union and the Japanese government in filing a complaint with the World Trade Organization (

) about China's manipulation of the global market in rare earth metals. "We've got to take control of our energy future and we cannot let that energy industry take root in some other country because they were allowed to break the rules," Obama said in a press conference. It's a clear signal that Obama will do anything to keep China from maintaining a stranglehold on rare earth metals - a set of 17 minerals that are responsible for powering everything from hybrid cars to self-cleaning ovens. More importantly, the filing is an acknowledgement that the minerals represent a crucial source of renewable energy that are now essential to the way we live. Continue reading this article

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