IF the global economy is stripped down to its most basic, we will find that chemicals power the economy. Energy is combusted hydrocarbons. Food is digested carbohydrates, fats, and proteins. Even a smartphone is a neatly arranged pile of refined elements – gallium, neodymium, lithium – each a chemical asset.
The scramble for oil defined the 20th century. I believe the conflict over rare earths will define this one. But there’s a flaw in this logic: We’re fighting over chemicals that take millions of years to form while ignoring the ones we can grow in a single season.
The fastest chemical factory on Earth isn’t a refinery or a mine. It’s a field of corn, a stand of switchgrass, or a vat of engineered yeast. Biochemistry runs on sunlight, air, water, and soil biology – replenished in months, not millions of years.
Mineral chemicals – oil, natural gas, rare earths, phosphates – are legacy assets. They are concentrated, finite, and geopolitically toxic. Their extraction scars landscapes; their refining poisons communities; their transport chokes sea lanes.
A soybean plant doesn’t need a conflict mineral policy. It pulls nitrogen from air, carbon from CO, and hydrogen from water. Within months, that plant produces oils, proteins, and complex molecules that can replace petroleum-based lubricants, plastics, and even some pharmaceuticals. Algae can be tuned to secrete hydrocarbons nearly identical to diesel. Fermentation can yield precursors for spandex, solvents, and synthetic rubber.
We already know how to do this. The obstacle is not science – it’s priority. Petrochemicals are cheap because the industry has had a century of subsidy and scale. Biochemicals are still treated as a boutique alternative. But if we flipped the equation – treated fossil carbon as a strategic reserve for only essential uses (like medical devices and high-temperature aerospace alloys) and mandated that fuels, plastics, and solvents come from annual crops or waste biomass – the economics would invert within a decade.
To do it calls for a three-pronged pivot. First, redefine national security. A country that imports 90% of its rare earths is seen as vulnerable. But a country that imports 90% of its biochemical patents is equally dependent. We need a Manhattan Project for synthetic biology and advanced fermentation – not to make bombs, but to make molecules. Fund open-source libraries of microbial strains that can convert cellulose into every major industrial chemical.
Second, rewrite the subsidy code. End all fossil fuel exploration subsidies. Instead, pay farmers well for carbon-negative feedstocks – perennial grasses grown on marginal land, not food crops. Offer price supports for bio-based ethylene, bio-based ammonia fertiliser, and bio-based rare earth analogues (eg, magnet proteins). Make waste-to-chemicals plants tax-exempt.
Third, build distributed biorefineries. Unlike oil refineries, which cost billions and sit in a few locations, biochemical conversion can happen at village scale – a shipping-container-sized fermenter turning agricultural residue into biocrude or bioplastics. This democratises chemical production, reduces transport emissions, and makes conflict over pipeline routes or shipping chokepoints obsolete.
Biochemicals are not a perfect substitute for everything. You won’t fly a 747 on soybean oil, at least not cheaply. High-temperature ceramics, certain electronics, and rocket fuels will still need mined elements for the foreseeable future. But the vast bulk of what we fight over – fuel for cars, plastic for packaging, solvents for industry – can be grown.
The real conflict isn’t between nations over rare earths or oil. It’s between two models of time: geological time, which rewards hoarding and conquest, and ecological time, which rewards renewal and cooperation.
If we continue to wage wars over chemicals that take millions of years to make, we’ll burn through the planet and each other. But if we invest in the fastest chemical factory we have – photosynthesis, fermentation, and synthetic biology – we might just outgrow the next war before it starts.
Let’s stop mining our problems and start growing our solutions.
PROF DATUK DR AHMAD IBRAHIM
Adjunct professor
Ungku Aziz Centre for Development Studies
Universiti Malaya
Affiliate
Tan Sri Omar Centre for Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy Studies
UCSI University
