Several problems with renewable energy

I am all in favor of renewable energy. Yet there are a number of problems that need to be addressed: new grid to handle all the new electrictiy, private property rights for the owners of the land for all the new power lines to install, and the one no government official will talk about...

All of these new technologies, from wind turbines, the new grid, to solar panels etc need colossal amounts of rare earth minerals to manufacture and install. And guess who owns 97% of all the rare earth minerals on earth?....China! And they have an official policy of exporting less rare earth minerals each year than the year before.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_earth_element

A Toyota Prius has about 200 lbs of rare earth minerals. A new large wind turbine has over 2 tons of rare earth minerals. Does it make any more sense to leave one source of energy - petroleum - which we require large quantities of from unreliable sources who often hate us to another source of energy - renewable energy via electricity? This makes the US completely dependent on one country China, who owns 2 trillion dollars of our debt and has us by the ying yang (pardon the pun) in relation to the rare earth minerals to even build this new industry.

This is a story worth following and especially if new sources of rare earth minerals can be found that the Western World can access in a friendly fashion.