Im a Canadian geologist so I obviously dont have any personal stake in this but I do want to share my thoughts.
I think anti-mining sentiment is understandable in most places but not always justifiable. Lithium mining is absolutely required to transition from fossil fuels. Unless the number of cars on the road is greatly reduced, replacing them with BEVs will require significant amounts of lithium or improvements to Na ion batteries. There is not enough lithium available to get by just on recycling.
The question then becomes: where should this lithium come from? If it is not mined in western countries like USA or Canada, it will be mined by China or developing countries. In this comparison, who has better environmental regulations? Which countries have more human rights abuse?
If we decide that we can mine these deposits in the west, there is still a question about where they are mined. Do we extract lithium from basinal brines? My understanding is that these are generally more environmentally risky than extraction from pegmatites (the deposit type in New England).
The final question becomes, which communities will have to accept this mining? In Canada, most of the time it is indigenous communities that suffer most of the negative impacts of mining. There are many benefits to the communities too (usually), but the indigenous communities do not have nearly as much political sway as say rich cottage owners might, so their preferences and desires often get steamrolled by government in the name of “progress”.
The unfortunate reality is that if we want to get rid of fossil fuels, we need to do a lot more mining and extraction or come up with some serious technological and societal innovation. In a globalized economy, saying that you dont want mining near your home means that you want some other people to deal with the potentially negative consequences of it. I am not saying that we need to allow all mining everywhere, but these are important ethical considerations that we have to make when talking about how we want society to progress.
Sorry for the rant.
This is a beautiful description of why the obvious move here is “fewer cars, way better public transit.”
Hard agree from me. Cars are such an inefficient use of resources its crazy. If I had it my way we would all get around by train, tram, or bike.
even then we still need far more batteries. we need them for the grid (though alternate chemistries are looking better for that; cars are trickier in many ways), and even with public transit we still need trucks and vehicles for last-mile transport of goods
Sorry for the rant.
Nuanced point is not a rant!
Mining has always been allowed on national forest land, but it was heavily regulated and overseen. They recently changed the rules so that no permission is needed for mining operations on less than 5 acres. This will be an ecological disaster
Yep, they are going to strip mine the Appalachians. And the sad thing is that the people in the Appalachians are going to welcome this. Because it means jobs in their minds.
Just like always USA fighting yesterday war. Lithium is already on the way out.
I would be extremely disappointed in the species if we’re still using lithium batteries in 328 years time. Not that I actually believe that estimate.
What exactly is 328 years of anything? Are they saying we consume X tons, and we have found 328×X tons? Or is there some sort of future consumption estimations or trend lines accounted for? Is this all functionally available, or can we only access 20 years worth of it economically and banking on future extraction improvements? With thay large of a supply I would expect economic viability of further extraction would diminish over time.
My interpretation of the image is, “we consume x per year, we estimate there is 328x in the Appalachian area.”
Aren’t Appalachians poisoned enough?
Does Trump own a golf course in the Appalachians?
Probably. Maybe more than one. It’s a massive mountain range stretching most of the East Coast, from Georgia to Maine.
Most of those states are reliably blue, too, so for the current administration it’s an added bonus
Well, the Appalachia cryptids are going to be feasting it seems…
This was my first thought. Big Cryptid© is funding this to consume workers.
Uh no
What bullshit. The usa already has extensive lithium deposits. It’s not a question of supply, it has always been a question of how much it costs to mine it. Lengthy permitting processes, environmental concerns, high costs, and technological challenges.
https://elements.visualcapitalist.com/white-gold-mapping-u-s-lithium-mines/
dont forget about refining, the us has basically no refining capacity
Lengthy permitting processes, environmental concerns
Those two don’t matter to the current administration.
Tell that to the states where the mines are located. Because they will laugh themself silly.
No one has ever cared about the mountain folks :(
Until they shart shooting. I don’t know a single person in Maine that wants Plumbago mined
Substitute those by corrupt assigning of contracts and public funds and pipedream “AI will extract Lithium for us” snake oil salespeople.
LOL that’s ridiculous campism.
Both sides of your uniparty are paid and work for the same companies.You have to be seriously delusional to not see the difference between the president routinely ignoring laws and all the other ones that at least pretended to want to follow them
That’s besides the point.
The infantile “but they do it much harder” is the same as with the aiding of zio genociders.
It doesn’t matter that there is a difference, but that both sides have the same policy.
It only matters to the dogmatic campists.
But I don’t expect anything better from the idiot country.
It has never been different and they don’t learn.
As long as they fuck up their own shithole for once I’m OK with it.
I have a feeling they’ll have a much harder time pushing through mining operations in Vermont, Maine, and New Hampshire than they did in West VA. This will be received like proposals of mining the great lakes would in MI or WI, and many of the residents (Boston area professors) have the resources and energy to resist it.
Didn’t they just remove the mining protection from the BWCA?
Yep and they’re working on removing protections for other federal land which I have little doubt they’ll* accomplish given it was the fed previously protecting it. I’m just saying I think it will be difficult to actually implement projects in some places due to local opposition combined with the energy and resources to sustain that opposition.
Not a good thing overall btw, by my figuring it just means under-resourced regions will continue to shoulder the bulk of industrial waste and pollution because they’ll be the least equipped to resist. Tale as old as time.
Pennsylvania which has a lot of lithium that can be extracted without mining. Brine from fracking can be a major source. Lithium extraction from fracking brine can be relatively sustainable considering fracking is already being done.
For now.
Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont all have different groups that individually disagree with mining once protected wilderness. The only selection of people pushing for this would be the rich who want the money.
I would not fuck with rights of New Hampshire. They will come after you. Never met one who wasn’t a bit off.
When the Civil War was breaking out and the governor of Vermont called for the state to raise $500k to support the war effort, the legislature passed a bill to raise a full million.
When they were called upon to send one regiment of men to fight, they organized seven.
Vermont, also, would not be a good state with which to openly fuck.
I love Vermont because of her hills and valleys, her scenery and invigorating climate, but most of all, because of her indomitable people. They are a race of pioneers who almost beggared themselves to serve others. If the spirit of liberty should vanish in other parts of the union and support of our institutions should languish, it could all be replenished from the generous store held by the people of this brave little state of Vermont.
–Calvin Coolidge
They may be a bunch of hippie hillbillies, but they’re the most chaotic good state. They fought in the revolutionary war and then didn’t join the union for a while
It’s like the push to deforest the western states. You’ll be surprised by the weird alliances that pop up when billionaires show up in the backyard. Wish we could find common ground broadly, but I guess I’ll take what I can get.
Surely it’s more economical to just recycle batteries
Require the ability that anything with a battery has the ability to have it removed for recycling. And force ban on single use batteries from vapes and like products that are frequently difficult in design to not be recycled.
Just make a vape deposit system. And resell the batteries back to the vape manufacturers. They are good for hundreds of charges.
Vapes shouldn’t be disposable in the first place.
Would probably also be expensive to validate that the used batteries are still safe.
They’d just crush them up for the precious metals.
I do think about disposable vapes with 20w USB c charging and three inch LCDs.
Like those components are so cheap or old that they’re basically free. People are just throwing these bells and whistles on like we use packaging cause why not
We do an amazing job with lead acid batteries. You don’t even have to throw them in the ocean anymore because you get money back.
I think the batteries in everyone’s car are basically ore for the next generation.
I think this is where we’ll start to see some innovation, large pita batteries supplimenting the crumbling infrastructure that people trade out every few years.
With the deregulation of wireless Internet, wired Internet is basically a liability now. I know that where I’m located the electric grid hasn’t been updated in years, the pipes are rotting out around us as well.
Yes, but how will that completely fuck up the countryside? Destruction for quick profit is the key part!!!
Also you need a jobs program for people who insist on living in mountains, refuse to leave or consolidate, and get mad at the idea of government handouts.
I’m sympathetic to Appalachians, most of the women I’ve dated have been Appalachian actually. There’s a lot to love about their culture and history. But as a political block they can be really frustrating as the region is just really inefficient for anything but mining, tourism, and subsistence farming, and the mining is killing them and everyone else.
Ridiculous, we need to dig up Appalachia to make 500 billion cellphones
the war against the land must continue until all our stories of resistance are forgotten
MFW I take a split-second to imagine anyone in this administration can competent their way out of a wet paper bag.
To action this, they’ll kick poor people out of a town, clearcut something’s only habitat, pollute the area, make a tentative agreement for billions that equal zero because of the tax breaks and other oversubsidized giveaways, and then close it all down after all that with a suspicious bankruptcy and government buyout.
The Appalachians are older than sharks.
So yeah let’s dig it up and burn it, since that’s apparently the only thing we know to do with nature.
If they really need to ruin nature somewhere, please let the US do this to their own nature so they can live with these consequences instead of outsourcing them
Yep, for once they do it to themselves.
And sharks are older than trees.
Blowing like the breeze
Touching your moms knees
They can pry the lithium from my cold, dead, Mainer hands. But I will be taking at least a few of them with me to Hell.
The rest will perish from the curse of the Paul Bunyan statue, which will awaken like a vengeful Lorax golem.
We have quite a few Paul Bunyans of notable size in Minnesota. If one awakens I hope they all do and become a weird US folklore version of the army of the ents.
Ayuh!
