Article is a brief review of the book "The Secret History of Gold" by Dominic Frisby.
EDIT: Aluminum itself may not be the best counterexample to gold as it was not discovered until the industrial revolution was well underway.
Until recently it was an "Oil Standard". But now we are in transition from Oil to Renewals. I think that transition is causing some if not most of the political issues we are having now.
With renewals, the source is always available and everyone just needs to purchase the means of accessing it once. With Oil, you need to constantly "pay" someone to get that energy, so many people/companies know their gravy train is ending and they are doing all the can to keep us using fossil fuels.
Also there is an on-going struggle on who produces the items needed to access sun and wind power. Right now China is easily winning that struggle.