Citing a lack of technological and economic feasibility, experts, including American Resources expert Gareth Hatch, recently dispelled a myth created by some journalists that the solution to China’s stranglehold on rare earths lies in a REE discovery below the surface of the Pacific Ocean.  However, technical issues are just part of the story.

Our very own Daniel McGroarty explains in his latest column for Real Clear World that because the United Nations’ Law of the Sea Treaty (LoST) would govern any deep-sea mining projects, the technical challenge is “bean-bag compared to the bureaucratic gauntlet of obtaining permission to drill in the world’s open oceans.”

McGroarty questions the nature of the LoST:

All of which raises the question: Is Law of the Sea Treaty, as critics contend, a nefarious global socialist experiment conferring on the UN the power to control and redistribute a vast swath of the world’s resource wealth, or an impenetrable bureaucratic shield to ensure no one ever extracts so much as an ounce of kilogram of that wealth?

Curious about McGroarty’s answer?  Read it here, and find out “Why the World’s Mineral Wealth is LoST at Sea.”