MAY 31 — 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. Medicine is synthesised or extracted organic compounds. Even a smartphone is a neatly arranged pile of refined elements – gallium, neodymium, lithium – each a chemical asset.

For centuries, control over these chemicals has shaped empires, ignited wars and dictated who eats and who starves. The scramble for oil defined the 20th century. The conflict over rare earths is seen defining 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 in Texas or a mine in Congo. 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.

The question isn’t whether we can shift from petro- and mineral-based economies to bio-based ones. It’s whether we have the wisdom to do so before the next war over phosphate or lithium makes the oil conflicts look quaint.

Mineral chemicals – oil, natural gas, rare earths and phosphates – are legacy assets. They are concentrated, finite and geopolitically toxic. Their extraction scars landscapes; their refining poisons communities; their transport chokes sea lanes. And because they take millions of years to form, every ton we burn or throw away is gone for good.

The fight for the last deposits is baked into their very nature. Rare earths are the perfect modern example. They’re not actually rare – but they are difficult to separate, and China controls over 80 per cent of refining. So the West panics, subsidies flow and new mines are proposed.

A soybean plant doesn’t need a conflict mineral policy. It pulls nitrogen from air, carbon from CO₂ 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.

In Malaysia, we have oil palm and rubber.

To do it calls for a three-pronged pivot.

First, redefine national security. A country that imports 90 per cent of its rare earths is seen as vulnerable. But a country that imports 90 per cent 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 (e.g. 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 and even many medicines – 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.

* The author is affiliated with the Tan Sri Omar Centre for STI Policy Studies at UCSI University and is an Adjunct Professor at the Ungku Aziz Centre for Development Studies, Universiti Malaya. He can be reached at ahmadibrahim@ucsiuniversity.edu.my.

** This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.