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Compared to all other basic materials we use in our life, lithium is pretty mundane. No war has been faught over cobalt. It's a byproduct of other mining, and quickly being phased out for cheaper less controversial materials.

Lithium mining gets a bad rap not because it's particularly environmentally devastating, but because of political narratives that try to prevent technological change. Lithium is really a mundane material. You never hear people complaining about potash mining or other similar salt extraction, lithium is just targeted because of the industries that it upsets, which are in turn orders of magnitude more damaging.

Which isn't to say that we shouldn't make it as environmentally friendly as possible. I'm just saying that if you fill up a tank of gas, you have a hell of a lot more to answer for when it comes to environmental karma than if you fill an equivalent lithium battery.

For anyone that would like to go to primary sources for this:

    Australia has one of the biggest lithium reserves and is the biggest producer of lithium by weight, with most of its production coming from mines in Western Australia. Most Australian lithium is produced from hard-rock spodumene, in contrast to other major producers like Argentina, Chile and China, which produce it mainly from salt lakes. [1]

World’s ten largest lithium mines in 2020 [2]

Having established that much of the world's lithium is sourced from my state here in Western Australia, these are the local environmental concerns raised [3] (1997) wrt Greenbushes [4] and the local EPA recommendations wrt Greenbushes expansion (2019) [5].

As a state we like clean air, clean beaches, native forrests, traditional ownership | stewardship, protecting the flora and fauna, and making sure mines are cleaned up afterwards.

Currently Greenbushes mine is a bloody great hole in the ground, of which we have many, in the near future it will be a large lake surrounded by regrowth.

Conditions in Argentina, Chile and China are left as an exercise for the reader .. there is also the matter of processing concentrates which is typically dirtier than mining to export concentrates.

Processing can be very polluting, it can also be closely watched and contained with plant wide pads under layed with membranes that are regulalry monitored, inspected, fined for breach, etc.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_mining_in_Australia

[2] https://www.mining-technology.com/marketdata/ten-largest-lit...

[3] https://www.bmartin.cc/dissent/documents/Cargill.html

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenbushes_mine

[5] https://www.epa.wa.gov.au/media-statements/expansion-greenbu...

Just dropped a google pin on the site and the area is greener than I expected. Would a lake the size of that pit fill naturally and actually persist? And would it ever be of any use for drinking water?

There's a hell of a question . . .

That particular mine pit will probably be fine (for reasons of geology and tailings treatment, etc . . . " However "

    The Berkeley Pit in Butte, Montana, is the cautionary tale everyone wants to avoid.

    The 1.6km-by-800m copper mine closed in 1982 and gradually filled with water irreversibly contaminated with sulphuric acid, copper, arsenic, cadmium and zinc from the surrounding rock.

    In 2016, some 3000 migrating snow geese were killed when they landed on the toxic brew. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) must pump out and treat the water – forever.

[source] https://cosmosmagazine.com/earth/sustainability/australias-p...

It's certainly worth highlighting that past Western Australian mines have not ben rehabbed to any notable standard:

Mine rehab in WA is the pits: Inquiry finds few success stories (2017)

https://www.watoday.com.au/national/western-australia/mine-r...

and worth noting that articles such as the one linked above are part of a swelling campaign by land holders and others with leverage to bake clean up costs into resource licencing.

At least some countries are learning from previous mistakes.

Local feedback helps, if people want land access they need to promise to respect it and hold to those agreements.

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/western-australia...

Speaking of copper, indigenous land rights, and Anglo-Australian multinational mining ..

https://phys.org/news/2023-06-oak-flat-apache-opposition-cop...

After the geese died, researchers found a microorganism living (and thriving) in the extremely toxic lake. This microorganism was filtering out the toxins 900 times more effectively than any other known organism[1]. The origin of the microbe was the gut of the geese. Radiolab included this story in one episode[2].

[1]: https://www.millerwelldrilling.com/miracle-at-the-berkeley-p...

[2]: https://radiolab.org/podcast/91721-oops

Large operations like this, especially those close to coast, generally have to set aside a certain percentage for rehab down the line. Normally part of mining/enviro approvals. The plan needs to be updated every 3-4 years, with updated estimates etc.

Greenbushes is miles away from having to worry about that. I’ve been tangentially involved in the mine designs for the new underground mine coming off the pit, so it’s decades away from rehab.

A few options for old pits I’ve worked on is backfilling with waste material and then capping with earth. Backfilling with treated Tailings and then capping. Or just letting it flood, but putting protections in. Generally they will be liable to manage if for a decade or so after mining is complete. Again all depends on the permit.

Biggest thing you worry about though, especially if you go underground is how to seal it off from other water structures (if required.)

Sorry for brain dump but lots of variables here!

(I’m a hard rock mining engineer)

G'day :-)

You might enjoy this tangential but otherwise Lithium related snippet of news.

NASA opposes lithium mining at tabletop flat Nevada desert site used to calibrate satellites

https://apnews.com/article/nasa-lithium-mining-nevada-climat...

Interesting answer, thanks.

This is too rosy of a picture when it comes to cobalt. Wish that it were so.

Two thirds of the world's output is from the Congo. There have been multiple wars over the DRC because of its resources. That's at a large scale. At a small scale even today there are over 100 armed groups that control parts of the country to exploit it's resources and people. It was worse in the past. Many people including children work in "artisanal" mines that are horrific; these people are often modern day slaves.

While lithium production is overall much more mundane, cobalt is very harmful to the people who it should be benefitting.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030142072...

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/02/01/1152893...

Yea, but it's not really a problem with cobolt, it's a problem with Congo. And it's still a good trade compared to oil that finances all manner of stuff, like the Ukraine war, and international islamist terrorism. There's also less money all in all, which means if we replaced all oil production with lithium batteries, there would be less money total going into industry that is easily hijacked for these types of purposes.

Let's also remember that avocado production is being hijacked like this. It's in general dangerous to have an industry that can be easily controlled and managed as it can then be taken over by mafia/terrorism/autocrats. I don't think we should argue that high value agriculture like avocados should be banned :P

> I don't think we should argue that high value agriculture like avocados should be banned

That probably would start a war. Western hipsters against the world. Throw in quinoa/kale and nukes would be on the table.

The problems in the Congo originated with colonialism [1], esp. King Leopold, and continued throughout the Cold War via the USofA's DoE proxy sourcing of very high grade uranium for nuclear weapons [2].

It's a region that has been actively destabilised by Europeans, Americans, and Russians since the scamble for Africa [3].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_the_Congo_Basi...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congo_Crisis

    The Congo's rich natural resources, including uranium—much of the uranium used by the U.S. nuclear programme during World War II was Congolese, led to substantial interest in the region from both the Soviet Union and the United States as the Cold War developed.

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scramble_for_Africa

> The problems in the Congo originated with colonialism

That's... overselling it I think. Congo wasn't a single stable and well managed state before colonialism. The Congo has been subject to the most horrible and incompetent management absolutely, but some parts of the world that have been through immense suffering has done very well and some have done very poorly. Just look at Korea!

Just blaming colonialism for everything is a bit racist honestly. It is saying that it's only whites that can change the situation and the native populations are not capable of steering their own actions.

I think there is something between the far right saying africans can't be trusted because [racism] and the (far?) left saying africans have no agency because [colonialist history].

> Congo wasn't a single stable and well managed state before colonialism.

I would like to hear more about this. Do you have a good source on the actual state of the pre colonial Congo basin not written by those who came to colonise?

> Just blaming colonialism for everything is a bit racist honestly.

Not everything .. but of course anyone familiar with, for example, the Belgian Congo and King Leopold will also be aware of how horrific those decades were.

> It is saying that it's only whites that can change the situation and the native populations are not capable of steering their own actions.

What I am saying is following a brutal generations long rule the local factions almost immediately had to contend with the two largest global super powers waging a bloody and secret proxy war to retain control over the richest highest grade uranium deposits on the planet. With money no object to provide guns, bribe warlords, sway oppositions, stage coups, etc I doubt any population could survive such outside pressure without being cleaved apart.

I don't think any of the indigenous tribes had developed writing so such evidence is probably not to be found. It would have to come from early colonizers writing down oral histories, and they were far more interested in oppression than preservation of culture.

Hmmm.

What about the pre colonial kingdoms such as, say, the Kingdom of Luba with a million people in fishing, farming and metal-working communities paying taxes to their King?

Do you think that they, or their neighbouring kingdoms in the Congo basin, had any works similar to, say, the Ethiopian Kebra Nagast (a 14th Century work)?

Well maybe. But look at Ethiopia, the only country in Africa never colonized. They aren't doing significantly better. I think the problems are much more complex and varied than just "the white man did it". It's dangerous to have that opinion if it's wrong, because wrong ideas lead to wrong solutions, which leads to prolonged suffering.

The wars in the Congo were fought over Nickel and Diamonds. No one cared about Cobalt in most centuries. It was the shiny waste product of Nickel mines that sometimes artists enjoyed painting with. (Many blue paints use Cobalt. There are multiple reasons we associate the element Cobalt with "blue".) Even at the peak of the worst of Lithium Ion battery formulations "demand" for Cobalt almost all of it was sourced from Nickel mining "waste".

Which isn't to say that it isn't valid to talk about the conditions of mining Nickel and Diamonds, but people are always (in nearly every century) mining Nickel and Diamond. But blaming Cobalt (and in turn Lithium Ion batteries) for all of the worsts excesses of Nickel mines is a bit extreme. Cobalt is the "waste product". Nickel was always the primary reason for all the mining. (Nickel will likely always be the primary reason. Especially now as Lithium Ion formulations have mostly eliminated Cobalt in recent years.)

> The wars in the Congo were fought over Nickel and Diamonds

That's why I said the wars were over Congo's resources. Which by the way included its people and rubber.

> blaming Cobalt (and in turn Lithium Ion batteries)

I'm not blaming anyone.

I just reported the truth that there have been wars in the Congo over its resources and that there are armed groups that control its resources like cobalt today. The conditions of which are often horrific. Correcting the original who said cobalt mining is benign.

Cobalt can't be blamed, it's not alive.

If we're assigning blame, we should be blaming the Western corporate governance where it's trivial to whitewash where resources were extracted and how they were processed. If we insisted that our governments passed laws keeping corporations, and their executives, directly accountable, and requiring that they maintain a full chain of custody, then conditions on the ground in Congo would improve dramatically.

It's not nickel's fault, or the fault of diamonds, or that if electric cars or batteries. The fault is and has always been our own.

Meanwhile... https://www.eurometaux.eu/media/20ad5yza/2022-policymaker-su...

> "this invention unfortunately ended up fueling all manners of wars through the specific material requirements, cobalt being the prime example,"

Goodenough was also involved in the invention of lithium iron phosphate batteries, which don't require cobalt or nickel.

For most use cases these days, those are the batteries we should be using. (And those are the batteries that the rest of the world needs to catch up with China when it comes to actually making them.)

Absolutely, it was just a unintended side effect of the original chemistry that nobody could have predicted. That they kept going on development to move away from these issues is something that should be commended.

The man wasn't perfect, but he was Goodenough.

I agree with the first part of your comment but the second part reads as something you could tack on to any inventor if you felt so inclined.

From a hyper environmentalist position the best thing you could do is jump off the nearest cliff. John Goodenough's inventions have done more for the environment than most others will and 'all manner of wars' is just complete bullshit.

Ha, I remember being so impressed with the "anti-skip protection" on my Discman because I could mount it on the handlebars of my bicycle and it wouldn't skip nearly as much as my old Discman. What a time to be alive!

>>More a lesson that even things intended to be good can have weird unintended consequences in a chaotic world.

No that lesson here is that when you look at human history, human will always battle each other, and it is unfair to say Li-Ion batteries "invention unfortunately ended up fueling all manners of wars " as war is inevitable.

By that argument, killing is fine because death is inevitable. What I meant was that we live in a world were something that seems so innocuous selecting materials in a laboratory to achieve a set goal can be amplified decades down the road in wild ways that few can predict. I wasn't saying "Goodenough you careless bastard!", just that his invention was a great example of how small things can turn into major issues. While it didn't cause it, the use of cobalt turned into an amplifier of the Congo war (the same could be said of gold and diamonds).

A good example could be like with LLM's. A brilliant technology that could amplify other issues in weird ways, it is only decades later that we will see what has come of it.

Not in the least bit, you are attempting to apply 3rd 4th or even 5th order effects /liability on an individual invention or group of people.

killing in your example is a 1st order event.

No different than how it would not blame Ford and GM for a drunk driver, I dont blame the invention of Li Ion for wars over Cobalt.

Doesn’t matter. War will always be fought over resources. If we didn’t have batteries and electricity we’d be fighting wars over lumbar and coal.

We were genociding people over bananas not very long ago, lest you forget.

Totally agree, but to stick to traditions here, the phrase is "it cannot be overstated".

Ah yes, that is fair! Noted for future uses. ;)

> However, from a hyper environmentalist position, this invention unfortunately ended up fueling all manners of wars through the specific material requirements, cobalt being the prime example, it also sort of helped kick off the idea of devices that could be almost disposable (non-replaceable batteries) but these are all secondary flow on impacts of Goodenough's core invention.

From an environmentalist position nothing else has even come close to getting us away from fossil fuels and enabling renewables. The environment doesn't even care about slave labor and wars have only a minor effect. It is coal, oil, and the like that are the enemy. We are already 20 years late in transitioning away from fossil fuels.

> However, from a hyper environmentalist position, this invention unfortunately ended up fueling all manners of wars through the specific material requirements, cobalt being the prime example

That's simply not accurate. Very few wars have been fueled by cobalt or the general material requirements of Li-ion batteries. Nearly every other major resource have prompted far more wars than cobalt (oil/gas, gold/silver, water, land, agriculture, etc).

Not really sure where you're going in the second half of this comment, I don't think it's even handed.

Nearly any invention can be used for many things. This man's life's work absolutely changed humanity for the better. The downsides are not nearly equivalent, even within several orders of magnitude.

Sorry, what war has been fought over cobalt, lithium, or nickel? I think that’s just not true.

"hyper environmentalist position"

Can't that be attributed to pretty much everything we do and consume? We're destroying oxygen with every breath.

To some degree yes, I get your argument from the absurd with the oxygen thing but that is a little bit of a stretch in comparison with the original sentiment.

That's why some people call it the 'anti human' movement. Because their primary metrics is 'if humans do its bad, humans are a disease on the planet'.

You're exactly correct. That's why the regression to the primitive never has a stopping point: they're never satisfied, unless humanity is dead. Ultimately in their philosophy any modification of the environment by humanity is bad, and humanity must modify the environment to survive (even at the most basic levels of agriculture, wood, fire, etc).

But you can go a step further: it starts with self-hatred, without exception that is where it always begins. That self-hatred is then projected outward as a more generalized hatred for humanity.

No, because our oxygen consumption is accounted for by the rest of the biosphere (the oxygen producers). We don't consume so much that we could realistically run out.

Good summary of his accomplishments. I remember reading that even he said he was not happy with the LI-ion battery and was actively working on its successor at UT. I would be curious how far he made it and any results he made with this next-gen solution.

I remember talking about lithium and sodium for rechargeable batteries in my junior high or high school chemistry class while covering electron affinity, maybe 1993:

https://chem.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Physical_and_Theoret...

As I get older, I see that innovation happens despite the tech industry, not because of it. Because so many ideas are obvious and straightforward to implement that only gatekeeping could work at a scale large enough to prevent them from manifesting.

I have not investigated the history of li-ion batteries at all, other than notable dates around the year 2000 that I quote for rants like this. But I would wager that the reason Goodenough's batteries took off is that he went through profitable channels so the military industrial complex and corporate competitors couldn't suppress them.

Actually I'm completely wrong:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_lithium-ion_bat...

1979. So li-ion batteries were suppressed until Obama's reelection around 2012, when the writing was on the wall and car manufacturers were forced to release electric vehicles that weren't terrible. So a 33 year gap where batteries, photovoltaics, etc etc etc could have kept CO2 out of the atmosphere:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth%27s_at...

So today's 420 ppm minus 340 ppm around 1979 equals 80 ppm, where each ppm is 2.13 gigaton, so about 170 gigatons of CO2 leaked into the atmosphere to preserve the profits of the fossil fuel industry and other moneyed interests of the status quo.

Let this be a cautionary tale, but also inspiration for fellow inventors. The thing stopping you from success is probably not the thing itself, but the real-life hurdles conspiring against you. IMHO the best defense against that is each other.