Seeking El Dorado

"Yeah, and we're goin' to Surf City, 'cause it's two to one
You know we're goin' to Surf City, gonna have some fun
You know we're goin' to Surf City, 'cause it's two to one
You know we're goin' to Surf City, gonna have some fun, now
Two girls for every boy"

    Jan and Dean, 1963

I understand the thrill of easy riches.

In 1963, I experienced El Dorado. I sometimes found morel mushrooms in March in the riparian area of my farm, the part in the occasional flood zone of the Rogue River. Each year in my boyhood my family would search the area and find a couple dozen of them to bring home. For some reason in 1963 there were many hundreds -- maybe thousands -- of them, for the first time ever, more than we could eat or give away to friends. So abundant, right there at our feet, sprung up out of the ground everywhere!

Never again. 

In 1964 an unusual mix of heavy November snow in the mountains, then heavy warm rains that melted that snow, created a "hundred year flood." It washed away the topsoil on that patch of ground. There have been few or no morels since then.

I look every year, imagining what could be, hunting for that El Dorado of morels.

Jack Mullen wrote about the search for riches from the earth, a motivating force in modern human history and perhaps all of human history. Humans look for better territory. What riches lie in that "promised land." What minerals are under Greenland's ice. Jack thinned and picked pears alongside me in local orchards. He was an outstanding four-sport athlete in high school. In adulthood he reads history, and follows politics and sports. He lives in Washington, D.C.

Guest Post by Jack Mullen

RARE MINERALS

It was once gold, then oil, and now it is rare minerals. Empires are built and defended in their search for new wealth.

The ancient civilizations of the Americas stood no chance once Cortez and Pizarro found gold to please their Spanish monarchs. Unfortunately for most of Latin America, early Spanish colonizers drew little from the concepts that the Age of Enlightenment that informed French and English colonizers as they established colonies north of the Rio Grande.

The intoxicating search for gold came late to the United States. Combine the quasi religion of Manifest Destiney with early gold discoveries in the California (Sutter’s Mill) and Oregon (Jacksonville), then later in the Black Hills of South Dakota, and you have the recipe for the brutal suppression and relocation of Native Americans from their traditional lands.

While the United States spent the latter part of the 19th century satisfying its thirst for gold and more land, a host of European countries found new frontiers to exploit in Africa and the Middle East. Germany, finally united under Bismarck, came late to the colonial land grab. The Kaisers deflected, deciding to display national strength and glory by building Germany’s military might.

As is the wont in European history, all that was needed was a little spark of misunderstanding and jealousy among its empire-seeking nations to create war, a modern war, which triggered World War I.

Oil replaced gold as the 20th century’s Holy Grail for empire. From Japan’s search for its Great Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere in the 1930’s to America dipping its nose in the Middle East, oil sparked small wars that grew out of control. Japan’s little invasion of Manchuria, German post-WWI expansion, and the U.S. invasion of Kuwait, all had huge unintended consequences.

The quest for renewable energy sources lessens oil’s impact on modern nations, to be replaced by the control of critical rare minerals necessary to create and store energy alternatives to oil.

Ukraine claims to hold $15 trillion worth of mineral resources, making it one of the most resource-rich nations of Europe. The country is home to the continent’s largest reserves of lithium, uranium, and titanium. Is it any wonder that Putin and Trump salivate as they jostle towards a Ukrainian peace deal?

China has the world’s largest deposit of rare minerals and controls the today’s world market. China also expresses interest in helping negotiate a Ukrainian peace deal, as does Turkey.

All this leaves Ukraine at the mercy of competing world powers and no trusted allies, except for NATO, which in now weakened by U.S. indifference.

Can it be that a new U.S.-Russian alliance will lead to a de-facto-control of Ukraine’s resources? If so, will both countries be satisfied in the short term? Doubtful.

As nations jostle to control the earth’s natural resources, keep in mind the love of automobiles and cell phones resonates worldwide. Will a fight over the control of rare natural minerals expand beyond Ukraine from the Congo to Greenland, to Brazil and even Vietnam? Do not bet against it.

 

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