Both of those can be bad at once you know...
A lithium mine is much more devastating to the environment than an oil well or franking. That doesn't mean either of these are really good options despite what either side wants to pretend.
A lithium mine is much more devastating to the environment than an oil well or franking. That doesn't mean either of these are really good options despite what either side wants to pretend.
Lithium exploration drilling near Litchfield National Park raises sustainability questions [1]
> University of Queensland professor of conservation science James Watson says that mining associated with renewable energy could cover about 50 million square kilometres of the Earth's surface by 2050.
> His prediction is startling.
> "About 10 per cent will be in national parks and protected areas, another 7 or so per cent will be in areas that have been identified as critical biodiversity areas to sustain species and stop extinction, and a further 15 per cent or so will be in our last remaining wilderness on the planet," he said.
I've spent a few decades in mineral exploration, in geophysics and in mapping global mineral and energy resources.
We have some real issues to sort out going forward with respect to resource extraction and the rights of indigenous people and wilderness.
[1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-12-13/lithium-found-near-li...
eg: The US has one ~$64 billion copper resource (leased to Anglo - Australians) in native lands [1] which is an as yet unresolved and sizeable can of worms, and that's barely the start of the list (although it is the largest global pending copper project).
There's a nice GIS directory of such things that we (here in W.Australia) compiled a decade ago (along with automation to run it forward) that's now a bit paywalled [2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resolution_Copper
[2] https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/campaigns/met...
The person you’re replying to quite correctly notes that mining Lithium is an improvement over extracting coal, oil, and gas. The term “green” is so nebulous snd ill-defined that it’s not worth talking about.
The best thing humanity can do for the earth is clearly to remove ourselves from it. Anything less than that is compromise. Sure. But sitting here saying “there’s no such thing as ethical consumption” doesn’t really get us anywhere.
But if we get to have a way to move at super-human speeds (ie > 5 km/h walking and > 30 km/h running), cheaply and without environmentally detrimental consequences, that’d be great :)
(Fellow cyclists, I know, cycling is an excellent solution for single-person small- and mid-range movement. I’m thinking here of mass transportation and goods transportation, where it’d be hard to use cycle-powered lorries across continents.)
But it looks like a lot of people assume they are just as bad without any quantitate or qualitative assessment.
Lithium mining is way less bad than oil extraction in both dimensions. If that lithium can offset oil consumption it looks particular good.
This isn't true at all. Lithium is mined in much smaller quantities and in fewer places. In some cases (Cornwall, e.g.), it can be obtained as a byproduct of geothermal energy. It can also be recycled. By contrast, the Wikipedia list of environmental disasters has an entire section devoted to oil:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_environmental_disaster...