The market for lithium is a global one. If it isn’t mined here, it is mined elsewhere. Likely where there are less regulations and so an even worst impact.
I feel for natives living on the reservations. Less regulations and the mining sites damages both the environment and their occuppacy ( both of the ecosystems and human genome ). Reservations for what? Deplete, Destroy, and Depopulate! That's their terminology of Reserve, for future exploitation and smart cities declaration! Includes control mechanisms.
@@glennjohnson2850 the MSHA and EPA both have regulatory authority on any mine in the United States including a reservation land. And also it would most likely help their community by providing well-paying jobs and a stable source of income. Check out the Navajo coal mine for more info.
It’s cognitive dissonance at its finest. You have to choose if you just want to lose some of the planet to Climate Change or lose all of it and go extinct.
This all smells like a false choice: the need for cars should be reduced in the first place, say by building infrastructure for public transportation. I know that America is mostly built around cars and have poor public transport services.
exactly. In the US our infrastructure, especially the suburban lifestyle, was designed in a world for cars. I'm not saying I don't enjoy the freedom of movement that a car gives me, but our society can be restructured to reduce the need for cars. If we can't do that, then I guess stopping global warming from completely destroying human civilization by investing in EV's is our only other choice.
@@JakeSpivek this is exactly the problem. Environmentalists want change but do they take public transportation? No. They feel that them championing the cause is enough to wipe their carbon footprint. Leonardo di caprio is a prime example. How big are his houses? Owns a private jet. Numerous cars. His carbon footprint is enormous, almost as big as the hypocrite he is.
So i do environmental Life Cycle Analysis's (LCA's) for a living. If there is lithium or copper in the product then the product emissions glow like a christmas tree in comparison to anything else. So I am pretty torn as electric cars are far better for CO2 production, but terrible for things like water toxicity. Climate change is the issue of the day where the Ozone was the last generations issue. Water Toxicity will be the next generations issue. As for mines. If the company pays for and enacts a proper reclamation plan. Then the issue is being overstated. However even American mining companies are kinda sleazy so I can understand why people are annoyed. Also that land really does look pretty If there is one word people need to start associating with sustainability it is not *green* it's *nuance* . No solution even solar or wind or nuclear is perfect. And you need to look at the tradeoffs of current options and pick the best one for that location and application. Also what is best today may not be true a year from now as technologies evolve.
Even if the mining company picks up the tab for the reclamation, those costs just get passed on to the taxpayers in the form of higher prices of Lithium batteries. There's no free ride.
@@chaosXP3RT Why stop there? Why not imagine a world where we live in a post-money post-war Star Trek universe? Anything is possible if you're delusional enough.
@@steviewonderisnotblind5833 Well mining asteroids and terraforming Mars for human-habitation in the next 200-300 years seems much more possible and viable and healthy for the human race than some fantasy like Communism or Star-Trek or god forbid some plan to control the human population growth
I’d love a documentary on Canada’s “responsible” diamond mining. Apparently if you don’t want a blood diamond, your next bet is to buy a Canadian diamond. Edit: just to clarify - I’m not fascinated by diamonds, but I was researching diamond jewelry a few months ago and fell into the wormhole of google “research”. So far I’ve learnt that there are very few mines in the African continent that follow any labor safety standards; lab grown diamonds are as good as natural diamonds; the price of diamonds are over inflated by the Belgian diamond monopoly (like De Beers) and they keep the supply artificially low by hoarding the diamonds (apparently); and if you really must have a natural diamond, Canada is the next best destination, after the African countries to purchase a conflict less diamond.
industrial diamonds are all the same as real ones, just get one of those or just don't get any. Diamonds are pretty but really no point in investing in them.
Engineer here. Cradle to grave, mining coal versus mining ALL the resources for solar/batteries (copper, lithium, cobalt, etc) leads to EIGHT THOUSAND times more mining for coal. The choice isn't "mine lithium or don't". The choice is "mine lithium or mine 8000 times more coal per kWh". See my recent video on misinformation in renewables where I discuss this in greater detail. It's sad, but our choices are literally "destroy small localized parts of the planet" to transition to a green economy, or "destroy the entire planet and go extinct". Combine that with the fact that this mine is re-habing the area after mining, and I believe these "environmentalists" impeding this work are actually eco-terrorists, and I say that as a passionate environmentalist.
Over here in Australia, we now have environmentalists trying to block a wind farm project in Tasmania. They're pulling the very same tropes used by conservatives who are anti-wind power; "bird blenders", "pristine views ruined", "shadowing", "exploding turbines", and "wind turbine sickness".
@@jonathantan2469 It's funny becuase the things you listed are true though. They aren't conservatives. They're environmentalists; real environmentalists.
People are going to have to give up something at some point. There's no reason everyone has to have a five seater car at their disposal 24/7/365 to have parked somewhere more than 80% of the tiime.
100% but people won't be so quick to give up convenience. Lithium isn't the answer. It never was. Once you peel back the marketing there's a massive hole in the Earth somewhere, and pollution running off into waterways, emissions from production and shipping etc. Hydrogen was always the better of the 3 but even still. The concept of urban mobility needs a massive rethink. How many SUV's and cars do we see with 1 person in them during traffic?
This is why industrial environmentalism can’t save us. We are just shifting industry to tax a different set of resources we’re not talking about reduction of resource usage
@Peace Frog there is no realistic solution. i’m just saying that industrialized environmentalism is just trying to repackage the same problem with a different bow. the only way would be to change our economy to be base on communal subsistence instead of consumer capitalism, de-industrializing where we can, and socializing basic resources (like water and food). This would mean giving up many of the modern amenities that we enjoy. But like you said, good luck getting rid of greed. the socialist revolutions of the 1960’s tried to do this.. and many failed due to international opposition and also internal corruptions. and they we only trying to fix class inequality... the sheer amount of social coordination required to address climate change is impossible for people to organize on a national scale there’s no answer, all we can do is wait for the gradual collapse of nation-states and try to prepare to survive it.
It's a misconception to think that lithium mining will be just there to supply luxury EV manufacturers. We eventually need lithium for any type of road vehicle, including the millions of commercial vehicles that keep the world running. Even if we would manage to drastically reduce consumerism in general, which I totally agree on, we still need vehicles to transport goods and people around.
I am an environmentalist. I went vegan 7 years ago to reduce my carbon footprint and I drive a fully electric vehicle (Nissan Leaf). I am privileged to be in a place with many EV charging stations. But even I agree this kind of protest is asinine. These people that want to stop the mine have hardly even thought about how to handle agriculture on a mass scale. Sure reduced population through voluntarily not having children will help a bit but not if it means big rigs, airplanes, ships, or trains cannot transport goods. If we want to get away from the use of fossil fuels we *need* a reliable alternative. Battery technology is our next best alternative.
I think it's a huge false dichotomy to say that we either need to keep relying on fossil fuels, or produce hundreds of millions of electric cars and trucks. The solution is going to need to involve massively expanded public transportation, rail, biking, and walking infrastructure to let as many people as possible not need cars at all. The idea of everyone getting around in privately owned individual cars of any kind is simply not sustainable. This is not a problem that can be solved with individual decisions to simply drive a different car, its going to need us as a society to collectively resteer off the path of urban sprawl and car dependence we've been on since WW2.
@@MagnumCarta Why don't environmentalists end their carbon footprint for good? Oh they're all greedy narcissistic assholes. C02 isn't causing global warming any more than the farts coming out of your mouth.
@@noir66146 Recycling is dirty and ineffective in the grand scheme of things. We should definitely have more local recycling plants but of the 3 Rs recycle is the last for a reason
I work with the rail industry, and some of our clients are various mining companies. The renewables & green tech boom is actually fuelling the mining & resources sector. More mines are being opened up across the lands to extract the minerals needed to make the solar panels, Tesla batteries, wind turbines, & e-vehicles. Ironically, this also includes coking coal & natural gas. They are used as raw materials to produce the chemicals & purify elements for the production chain...
well, for starters, the problem here is power storage, not production. nuclear cars are a really bad idea. but for power production, while there are a lot of promising designs being proposed, it still has problems and not a great track record. and before you jump to 'modern designs are better!', all the claims people have regarding how safe and cheap new designs have.. well, people also said those things about the old designs. it is easy to praise things that have not had a chance to go wrong yet.
Most people are scared, and those are likely the people that don't know how nuclear energy works. The other reason is that nuclear has a high upfront cost that sways away most governments and private companies. Nuclear in the long run is more cost efficient and reliable than other sources of energy, but it is not profitable in the short term. People don't care about the long run, they want answers now. Also, what a lot of these "environmentalist" miss is the fact that no matter what source of energy we have, we will need some form of storage, which is why lithium is being used. We can be 100% renewable and still need batteries for storage.
Keeping aside that you still need something to store the nuclear energy in, You still have nuclear waste to deal with. Nuclear waste takes hundreds of years to fully decay
EDIT: I'm actually wrong, correction in comments The argument that electric cars will reduce emissions is also redundant in most of the world, because in most places the electricity you use to charge your car is generated using fossil fuels.
More electric cars means there is a consumer of electricity at the expense of fossil fuel consumers. That electricity should be provided by renewable sources. These two aspects are complementary, certainly electricity can also be produced from fossil fuels, but if it can be obtained from renewable sources it is much better that there are more electric and less combustion cars around. For example, in Oslo (Norway), which is the EU's green capital, 93.4% of the nation's electricity is produced by hydroelectric power plants. In addition, there are many incentives for electric vehicles and related infrastructures.
@@giovannipelissero1886 argument makes no sense. Until energy storage competes with fossil fuels (ie gas fired peakers) the majority of power supplying the grid (where evs will get their power...) will come from fossil fuel sources. Please don't send me a citation/quote from some clean energy lobby group.
@@giovannipelissero1886 Yea, I'm from New Zealand, and here about 85% of our electricity is renewable, so the electricity charging the electric cars here is from renewable sources. But you can't tell me electric cars make sense in Germany, where they're constantly opening up new coal mines to meet their electricity demands. I completely agree that there should be a switch to renewable electricity generation, but you can't say that in the meantime, electric cars are still worthwhile/driving a change to renewable electricity.
If you want to reduce fossil fuel use on the grid, you need lithium battery storage to serve demand when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine.
“I love electric vehicles, it’s the future” “60% of the worlds cobalt comes from the Congo where they use children as slaves” *Silence, sips Starbucks*
There's a lot going into reducing cobalt and possibly to eventually remove it. Change is a given we as humans must either try or fade into obscurity. But I'm willing to bet most people are not willing to completely give up there modern amenities. Every society has been built on bodies, it's up to you too decide between death or growth. It is important for our planet and especially our species to move past this pale blue dot, it is the only way to preserve it without mass death on a relatively fast scale geographically speaking.
EVs or no EVS, if you want to be sanctimonious about cobalt, it's in your phone, your computer, your gas car, the register at Starbucks, and most things with processors or semiconductors
I think the thing that a lot of people don't consider when problem solving is that solutions will not be instant. We will have to go through many rough, inefficient, and honestly bad iterations before we're where we want to be.
Until we are there… could we maybe have cheaper petrol? Like he said, “There are ways to mine materials safer than and cleaner.” Why isn’t that logic applied to natural gas/crude oil
Right.... Gee I wonder how much concrete is needed to encase all the stupidly toxic waste that produces. Nulcear definitely has reason to exist, but it's hardly carbon free.
or a thorium salt reactor, the reason we use the reactors we use today, is the by-product is used to make nuclear weapons, thorium salt reactors produce less waste and can self encase the core in salt in the event of a meltdown. UA-cam it when you get a chance, fascinating stuff
Lithium Nevada is owned by Lithium Americas Corp [NYSE: LAC], which owns Thacker Pass 100% as well as 49% of a lithium mine being built with Ganfeng in Argentina which should be producing next year. LAC recently raised $400 million and now has $500 million cash on hand available to fund Thacker Pass.
“Standing Rock situation” and “indigenous burials” Dropping the ball on members of every northern Nevada tribe gathering to oppose the mine. Let’s see if Vice News cares of enough for people who actually live/lived there.
@@tubester4567 As they should, since they are affected by the operations of the mining companies not to mention all the loss of land they had to suffer over the centuries. They should be getting a lot more tbh.
@@tubester4567 Well the Navajo got fucked over when they were mining uranium in the 40s... Poisoned their water supplies and gave lots of people cancer. All because the dust in the air was irradiated and the blew it towards them.
I’ve grown and lived in norther nevada my entire life, sadly what you never learn in the midst of all the “boom bust” luster, the mass deforestation of northern nevada. The grease wood wasn’t as good as much of the wood used deeper into California so they had to cut down more of it to create the charcoal to smelt the metals. The mountains the Humbolt to California were nearly stripped, which helps make nevada appear as just a desert. All that if that combined makes it seem like Nevada is just untouched potential, in reality to make a sustainable living in this environment is very difficult and the path we’ve sent ourselves down as an economy based on service and distribution in this state, to try and mine the lithium to solve a mass movement issue seems pointless. Nevada has tons of driving to be done to get around and through the state. As long as folks keep coming into this area for the sake of sucking up a quick profit out of the ground, this state will be just a backwater desert for private business and military weapons testing. All while the people occupying the states borders are wondering how their energy problems will be solved with the answers in our own back yard.
80% of Nevada is federal property anyways. And Nevada has been getting nuked and bombs dropped on it since 1945. Nevada's lithium is more important to the USA geopolitically than it is to Nevada's people. Sorry, but Nevada has always been dealt a bad hand and it will get more until the Colorado River dries up and everyone flees the state.
@@chaosXP3RT “Federal” being public. You can drive your vehicles and over most of these mountains unlike lots of places. The “federal” and “public” terms is a bit confusing when you do consider the weapons used in that space. I’m in the north so the issue here is drought through lack of precipitation to fill reservoirs, and the diverting of water for agriculture which in turn doesn’t directly help sustain these communities. Most of this stuff is exported, the area used to be famous for the cantaloupe export. The greater good of the gold and silver mining industries pale in comparison to the development of alcoholism, prostitution, domestic abuses, and everything else that associated this state with a place called “Sin City”. All for the sake of a currency no longer involved with it. The simple argument is that the quick hurry to yank more resources out of this area for the sake of trying to justifiably fix an issue, be it backing to fight a war or Or to help put a dent in a global climate issue, this isn’t a start at all. We just passed legislation here to protect the “dark sky” areas, just to have a short “job creating” opportunity pop up near those areas. The countless abandoned mines through the state and the completely standing ghost towns full of equipment is a testament of how business is done here, where generations of children will grow up. I’d rather it service the fact that we have to be a center piece for the American southwest for the sake of mass distribution hubs and the “Largest industrial center in the world” being USA Parkway, contributing to the climate crisis here. How about all the vehicles leaving this area become the electric vehicles we need since they are driving hundreds of miles just to hit the next state line. The amounts of lithium that will be used for selling cars that will be beyond expensive for the working class, doesn’t really help anyone. It’s a false perception of help.
I’m Nevadan too. But lithium, cobalt and other battery necessities are going to become essential. Possibly as big as a national security. If we can overthrow a democracy (Bolivia) and destroy the lives of natives, we can dig up our own lands. Wars are coming and we can’t be tied up in a desperate reliance on other countries. Yeah, we need to reduce. We need to stop pretending that an electric car is some kind of moral and environmental gain. We need to limit environmental damage. But we also need to stop outsourcing the environmental destruction that feeds a first world lifestyle. Vegas keeps the state in the black at a terrible cost, the kind you can’t see as easily as starving foals being shot in pens like with the grazing lands, this is just one of those externalities.
@@vysharra that is also the side argument, it’s all perception of use. It’ll be big bucks and necessary while we keep pushing this “electric car” movement, at the same time we mass consume. Either way it’ll be done because these are the seeds we’ve sown. I grew up in fallon, I could ride a bike from end to end of that town. Making people consume for the sake of healthy stocks is the ideal for a free market, how can you justify destroying stocks and also limit living by reducing the consumption practices. Again quite the predicament for the “governed” when it comes down to it
The people of the southwest and anyone who joins em will have to look around some times and see that they're in an empire that only uses them for resource on land stolen from them. Hell, the original Latino inhabitants are even still the majority in most of the southwest long after it was colonized, along with remaining tribes that survived the genocides, people just need to realize the southwest must take its destiny into its own hands. Stop letting all of the resources get sucked right up to DC and the pockets of the corps that own it.
The thing is that oil also needs to be extracted from the ground, transported, refined and then transported again to your local gas station. This entire process makes just as much, if not more pollution than lithium mining. Almost all oil wells that were easily accessible are now empty, so modern oil extraction comes from oil sand and very deep wells, which make the oil extraction process even worse. Also, the next generation of electric car batteries (called solid state batteries) won't need rare metals like lithium or cobalt and they will be easier to recycle. I don't know the details about all car manufacturers, but Mercedes will purchase all its solid state batteries from a Canadian company starting in 2022
We had the same thing years ago with hydro power dams. It was supposed to be free green energy and now due to the massive damage caused we are taking them out. Buy less. Drive less. Repair and dont replace. Its better for the environment to keep your old vehicle than to buy a new electric car. So no. We dont need to keep destroying our planet. And i believe we should also have strict regulations for how we obtain materials from other countries as well
@@ThexXxXxOLOxXxXx If you live in North America, the oil you consume either comes from the oil sands of Alberta or from deep wells located in the USA. The USA became the biggest oil producer a few years ago because deep oil extraction was approved. As a result, if you live in North America, an electric car is definitively better. It is even more where I live (Province of Quebec) since 100% of our electricity comes from hydropower
@@PG-3462 but its the same with lithium it takes carbon and alot of energy to mine the lithium then to transport it to a sorting plant then to the factories then back to the consumers
7:52 "fast-tracked" I worked for the EPA. Fast-tracked means one of two things: 1. You can have your project moved to the head of the line by paying an extra application fee, or 2. Your project moves to the head of the line thanks to political clout. Sometimes both occur to get lightening fast fast-tracked.
The irony is that these environmentalists here drive gasoline cars which have immense environmental costs, but want to grandstand about the least harmful option moving forward. As long as the mine is cleaned up as they move forward, that’s fair.
Almost went to jail for anti Gold mining in New Zealand a few years back but it was literally happening in my backyard. If people want to help the environment the easiest answer is public transport. Individual ownership of cars is the main problem but nobody wants to give up their ride for the earth not in this society that values wealth of possessions & greed over everything.
@@daveanderson3805 Nah just a realist ignoring the excesses of our consumer society is the usual mindset of most people i am guessing you included & that's fine we won't be around to clean up the mess exactly like we are cleaning or at least trying to clean the chemical waste & refuse from industry that our parents & Grandparents left for us they never imagined when dumping Millions of Tons of hazardous materials into oceans that it would come back to bite us either or that the Refuse tips would be uninhabitable for humans for hundreds or even thousands of years buts thats whats happening.
As a fifty something year old who grew up in California, some of the earliest memories of the news I have are hearing about the giant oil spill that devastated the coastline around Santa Barbara, one of the most beautiful places in the state. A half century later, the world has seen endless marvels of technological innovation, but the pace of ecological devastation has only accelerated on most fronts. If technological innovation had anything to do with averting our ecological crises, I think we might have seen more signs of success on that front by now.
Really depends on the battery technology you want to learn about. But if you simply search on UA-cam for "How Lipo battieries are made" you'll find many many videos that explain it. :) Cheers!
"200,000 abandoned mines across the United States." And the vast majority of those were created before any modern mining laws. It irks me when environmentalists harp on this, because those mines were created before we had any idea of the environmental consequences.
Electric vehicles are NOT green, nor environmentally friendly. So the politicians pushing that they are, are either lying or ignorant to the facts. Here are some facts that the global warming alarmists either don't know or are turning a blind eye to in the hopes that you never know. Producing an electric vehicle contributes, on average, twice as much to global warming potential and uses double the amount of energy than producing a combustion engine car, and this is mainly because of its battery. Battery production uses a lot of energy, from the extraction of raw materials to the electricity consumed in manufacture. The bigger the electric car and its range, the more battery cells are needed to power it, and consequently the more carbon produced. An electric vehicle is only as green as the electricity that feeds its battery. A coal-powered battery is dirtier than a solar-powered battery, but most people are ignorant of the source of energy that they use to charge their electric vehicle. Do you know? Battery production also causes more environmental damage than carbon emissions alone. Considering dust, fumes, wastewater, and other environmental impacts from cobalt mining; water shortages and toxic spills from lithium mining is disastrous, which can alter ecosystems and hurt local communities. That area of the U.S is already struggling due to water shortages so where will they get the water source for this production plant? While an electric vehicle has a higher carbon footprint at the beginning of its lifecycle, it is typically cleaner once in use. Studies show that over time, it can catch up on the combustion engine car. The point at which an electric vehicle’s lifetime emissions break even with a combustion engine car also depends on the car’s mileage...For example, in Germany - where about 40% of the energy mix is produced by coal and 30% by renewables - a mid-sized electric car must be driven for 125,000 km, on average, to break even with a diesel car, and 60,000 km compared to a gasoline car. It takes nine years for an electric car to be greener than a diesel car, assuming an annual average mileage of 13,500 km (as was the case in Germany in 2002, compared to 12,700 km in England in 2013). Most consumers will have bought a new car by then. The case is similar in the US. However, an EV battery will NEVER last that long! When the capacity of electric car batteries drops below 70-80% after about 7 - 10 years of use, they are no longer strong enough to power the car. An estimated 11 million tons of spent lithium-ion batteries will flood our markets by 2025, without systems in place to handle them. This matters if we are to address climate change. Existing battery resources must be used as best as possible, to avoid pollution from toxic waste and secure a strong supply of raw materials at low environmental cost. To recycle a battery, it currently costs €1 per kg. But the value of raw material reclaimed is only a third of that. Recycling lithium costs five times as much as extracting virgin material. Hence, only 5% of lithium-ion batteries are recycled in Europe.
@@pennynutter Humans as a whole are not very environmentally friendly. Yes, much of the metals produced for electric vehicles still produce carbon because many of the machines are still carbon powered. However, that is changing, and the industry understands this must change to meet the demands of investors who want 'cleaner' energy. There are several mines planning an all-electric operation to come online soon. We cannot just flip a switch and move the entire economic supply chain away from carbon based fuel overnight, or even a decade. These things take time, but we will get there. I am also not entirely sure of your argument here. From what you presented it seems like the attitude of "oh everything isn't perfect so we should just stick with carbon powered vehicles." What a pessimistic and closed-minded outlook. Lastly "global warming alarmists," really? Do you work for BP or Shell? But then you talk about addressing climate change so which propaganda do you ascribe to?
7:15 Dude, if you are gonna get all philosophical about it, then this debate will never end and we will never progress. Thank goodness, there exists more practical people who are willing to do stuff rather than these people who like to sit around philosophising.
They don't have the filters yet. But they're close to solving it. Right now they do that but they have to dry it in giant ponds. And they're having trouble removing the magnesium from the lithium. So they only get 20% of it.
The energy required to do this will release more carbon into the atmosphere than all the electric vehicles made with the lithium would have released in a whole lifetime as an ICE vehicle...
There is a lithium project being worked on in Clayton Valley, next to Silver Peak, that is larger than LAC and may not need any sulfur at all. Using a chloride method of "table salt". Cypress Development. It will be a big name in the future, mark my words.
I hate this move to battery powered transportation. BEVs take too long to recharge, they catch fire more than any fossil fuel powered car ever has, and they don't fit our day-to-day way of life. As combustible as hydrogen is, the fuel cell is safer, refuels in just a few minutes, and when hydrogen is produced from water via electrolysis, it's vastly cleaner than lithium mining and doesn't destroy natural habitats in the process. Researchers are making breakthroughs with electrolyzed hydrogen faster than battery technology, so hydrogen fuel is on track to become as costly or less than petroleum fuels, and don't forget about energy density. Lithium batteries have less than 1 MJ/kg of energy, gasoline has ~45 MJ/kg, and hydrogen has ~130 MJ/kg; the less weight the energy source adds to the car, the more energy efficient the car is. BEVs use lithium cobalt oxide, cobalt is a rare earth metal, very expensive, and as the word *"rare"* implies, there isn't an abundance of it, so with all these battery electric vehicles using it all up, cobalt, and the battery tech, will become very scarce sooner than you think. What everyone really should be focusing on first is switching from carbon power (e.g. coal, oil, natural gas) to nuclear power. Nuclear produces zero carbon emissions while it's in operation and provides up to a million times more energy per kilogram than fossil fuels. Solar and wind are fine...as a supplement, but they won't power everyone's homes and businesses 24/7 and they would take up an inordinate amount of space, and we'd still have to rely on batteries to get us through the dark and windless hours, not to mention all the habitats we'd have to destroy to make room for all these low-yield natural power generators. electricityasia.wordpress.com/2017/05/03/comparing-energy-density-of-solar-wind-nuke-others/
Environmentalism has its role and place but when they start talking about population control and completely disregard practicality, they lose all credibility
@@eddyecho Hang on, how do they lose their credability? We are overpopulated, and that's a fact. I'm not sure why so many people lose their minds over this fact. Anthropologists have studied overpopulation in nature and their consequences. We are no different, but in fact we're worse due to our consumption levels. How are you people so obtuse?
@@eddyecho It's a fact that the world is overpopulated, don't shoot the messenger. It obviously isn't a very fun problem to talk about, and there aren't any agreeable solutions, but it is a problem.
From somebody that worked at a battery recycling plant before. There is not enough they can make from recycled batteries. I think they should make batterie recycling a lot easier. So more can do it.
When I think about environmentalist I start thinking about how they are similar to anti-natalists. We should just stop having children and the world will just pass by without us doing any harm, but the environment will just naturally destroy itself with natural entities and other species. Then we go to fatalism, so everything is pointless. We should all be gamers, we create activity with an objective and a set of rules to follow and we take it seriously, live life and have fun. Have children, change the environment for us while being mindful to share and live in harmony with the environment and other species.
the only livable way as i would very much enjoy is if we lived beneath the earth or above it in a space station. although not entirely possible but entirely cool. its the real option that we will probably be forced to consider one day and i wish we would just work on that instead.
This is ridiculous. The amount of surface land affected by mining is minuscule. The real environmental impact of mining comes from water and air contamination due to the chemicals used in leaching and processing. If you can control those then mining poses basically no environmental risk.
Your statement is ridiculous. Electric vehicles are NOT green, nor environmentally friendly. So the politicians pushing that they are, are either lying or ignorant to the facts. Here are some facts that the global warming alarmists either don't know or are turning a blind eye to in the hopes that you never know. Producing an electric vehicle contributes, on average, twice as much to global warming potential and uses double the amount of energy than producing a combustion engine car, and this is mainly because of its battery. Battery production uses a lot of energy, from the extraction of raw materials to the electricity consumed in manufacture. The bigger the electric car and its range, the more battery cells are needed to power it, and consequently the more carbon produced. An electric vehicle is only as green as the electricity that feeds its battery. A coal-powered battery is dirtier than a solar-powered battery, but most people are ignorant of the source of energy that they use to charge their electric vehicle. Do you know? Battery production also causes more environmental damage than carbon emissions alone. Considering dust, fumes, wastewater, and other environmental impacts from cobalt mining; water shortages and toxic spills from lithium mining is disastrous, which can alter ecosystems and hurt local communities. That area of the U.S is already struggling due to water shortages so where will they get the water source for this production plant? While an electric vehicle has a higher carbon footprint at the beginning of its lifecycle, it is typically cleaner once in use. Studies show that over time, it can catch up on the combustion engine car. The point at which an electric vehicle’s lifetime emissions break even with a combustion engine car also depends on the car’s mileage...For example, in Germany - where about 40% of the energy mix is produced by coal and 30% by renewables - a mid-sized electric car must be driven for 125,000 km, on average, to break even with a diesel car, and 60,000 km compared to a gasoline car. It takes nine years for an electric car to be greener than a diesel car, assuming an annual average mileage of 13,500 km (as was the case in Germany in 2002, compared to 12,700 km in England in 2013). Most consumers will have bought a new car by then. The case is similar in the US. However, an EV battery will NEVER last that long! When the capacity of electric car batteries drops below 70-80% after about 7 - 10 years of use, they are no longer strong enough to power the car. An estimated 11 million tons of spent lithium-ion batteries will flood our markets by 2025, without systems in place to handle them. This matters if we are to address climate change. Existing battery resources must be used as best as possible, to avoid pollution from toxic waste and secure a strong supply of raw materials at low environmental cost. To recycle a battery, it currently costs €1 per kg. But the value of raw material reclaimed is only a third of that. Recycling lithium costs five times as much as extracting virgin material. Hence, only 5% of lithium-ion batteries are recycled in Europe.
Depends on where you live. No sacrifice is ever too big for someone else to make, so naturally the 'no brainier' is any solution where the speaker gives up nothing and someone somewhere else bares the cost... and that is what is going on in this story. The environmental cost is being born by one group so that another group does not have to make the sacrifice if reducing their growth.
The economic impact of digging up lithium mines is irrelevant when you consider the impact of explosive population growth that is occurring in places like India, China, and Africa.
Have you heard of the concepts of "carrying capacity" and "overshoot"? These are really important terms in ecology. I'd recommend checking out a book called "Overshoot" by Dr. William Catton. Great introduction to the issue of overpopulation. It's a problem that can be solved in a humane way. But first we need to educate ourselves on the issue and the need to address it.
Reduce consumption - yes. Reduce population - no. Population control has never worked and is inhumane. Just look at China's 1 child policy. That didnt stop them from becoming the world's largest polluter. Or compare the carbon footprint of Nigeria and Qatar. Consumption is the problem, not people
@@sandcastle1128 Yeah, population control is sensitive. What to make of low birth rates in developed nations? Even upper middle class Chinese couples having one child as a choice now. Getting rich seems to slow population growth. So consume more to breed less. Paradoxic huh?
If we're sticking with the 'car' model there's no point in digging up the lithium. There is no car-based societal model that saves us from the worst effects of climate change. We need to be working on mass public transit solutions to have any hope of slowing climate change. I haven't heard ANY politicians or planners speaking seriously about shifting away from the single-occupant vehicle dominated traffic model so leave the lithium where it is until we're ready to use it EFFECTIVELY.
Is that because they want to buy plastic? Or because there are no feasible alternatives at the moment for scale? This is a strawman used by every anti environmentalist. “Oooh you say we should reduce technology while you’re on your iPhone what an idiot” There are no alternatives to the lifestyle that is shoved down our throats. Environmentalists are simply asking why aren’t there alternatives that are feasible. A lot of this is due to markets at the moment not having the means to make these alternatives cheaper. But society and govt at large have regulated life so much that in some areas a life of wanting less throws you to the side as an outcast and there is no chance in creating ‘alternative’ lifestyles that others can pursue that strive away from mass consumerism and greed. Living off the land without a footprint isn’t possible because the population is taxed and regulated so heavily that you must work a job and buy your living to stay alive and out of prison so instead you must abuse and profit off the land because that is the only feasible option that markets view land as useful for.
@@nolanyoung8786 Nimbyism is by far the most classist & racist thing you can do. The so called green movement is filled with people dumb enough to believe they are helping & part paid opposition. Why else would you see the coal industry & environmentalists pushing for solar? It's a giant rip off like most things "MARKETED" as green. We have the tech to make damn near any process we need to recycle. The issues is power, we need an all nuclear base load to free mankind.
@@nolanyoung8786 Environmentalists should lead by example instead of impeding progress and what currently helps the Greater Good. That same guy said we need to reduce the human population. But I bet he also protests mass-shootings too
"You live in a tent" - where did your food come from sir? Did you not drive or be driven to your remote tent? We need energy storage although it could be hyrdrogen or Carbon Capture they will have some environmental costs as well.
Every form of human growth and energy production will have an environmental impact. It's up to society in large to decide what cards to play and what's worth saving. Personally I'd much rather see a small number of species be displaced rather than entire climates and face uncontrollable global mass extinction at a rate unknown to the Earth's history and that may possibly be irreversible.
This is a stupid argument, the world necessitates using these things. In order to push for reform, you still have to use a vehicle. Seems pretty easy to understand in a world where wars are often fought in the name of peace.
looking at solely the visual impact is the dumbest thing you could potential ever do. An oil rig is emptying a larger volume of soil of its oil, than even a mine would.
A lot of people dont realize the long time after effects of mining... in the public eye a state like Montana is pure, and pristine when in reality mining has left much of the water poisoned, and land destroyed
Idk why we don't also think about building society in a more sustainable way. If we lived in denser cities and had better transit, we wouldn't need to have personal vehicles for everyone. Like y'all people lived in cities and traveled the world without cars much longer than we've had them. Our "unchangeable" society is less than 100 years old
You can live in polluted, overpopulated, diseased concrete blocks if you like. I for one prefer living in natural open spaces with the rest of the animals.
You can live in polluted, overpopulated, diseased concrete blocks if you like. Just be prepared for a weaker immunity to basically everything. I for one prefer living in open natural spaces like the rest of the animals.
Not just lithium, those batteries need Cobalt, Nickel and Manganese. All of these metals are causing severe ethical and environmental damage, people are just too blind to see it.
I've gotta agree with the mining guy - there are ways to reduce the impact of their mining operation, and there are steps (even some which haven't been discussed yet) which can be taken to revive the natural environment after their mining operations have been completed. But yeah, ultimately we do need to reduce our need for cars. I think the people opposing the mining operation are overestimating the long term impact of this mining operation (but I admit I could be wrong). At the very least, it's a good thing they're not mining in the middle of a rainforest!
The issue is that lithium ion batteries are not able to be made for longevity so after a while they won't charge up properly and eventually we'll have to make new batteries and mine for more lithium
@@joshuasweeney1159 The lithium in the batteries is recyclable. Batteries in general are highly recyclable. if you look at traditional car batteries 98% of the mass of a lead acid battery is recycled. The lithium isn't used up in a bad battery. The reason we need more mining is because we need a lot of batteries to electrify our entire economy and stop relying on fossil fuels. Cars are just part of the equation but grid scale batteries to store solar and redistribute it at night is something we need batteries for.
Lmfao these people always talk about lowering human population, untill we get covid. Then its "is the economy worth human lives???" Then we get environmentalists acting like "just mine the lithium without child slaves and without hurting the environment!!!" White girls got the logical reasoning of a toddler.
Electric cars aren't the issue, infact it's a good idea. The problem is using dangerous rare-earth minerals like lithium to make the needed batteries and generating the power for these cars using coal. We can't solve the puzzle with just 1 piece.
Dan, you should look what is left when coltan is mined in the east of the congo its a snapshot of things to come . in a way i am glad its being done here in america that way people can see this for themselves.
@@PHlophe I know when a gold or silver go under bankruptcy , they don,t do anything. Nor do they do anything in third world countries. Just leave waste..anything produced create waste. Always. But where do we draw the line?
Ah yes let’s just launch asteroids weighing more than entire mountain ranges at earth using technology that doesn’t exist and with no regard for what happens if we miss or for the sheer amount of material that will be brought into orbit because of that
The animals and species they wanna save from the mining are already under threat but since it's not as visible as a mine they are oblivious to the ongoing destruction. Hell why should they care about reefs and fishes as long as crude oil is pumped up and they can drive around their beautiful valley.
No its not, at this moment there is not a single working battery with enough energy density to even come remotely close off being viable for use in electric cars. Other options are being heavily researched for decades and none of those are remotely promising. They all have there problems, they either only works for a couple of charges, are practically impossible to produce, catch fire easily, etc..... BTW im not pro lithium battery electric cars either im more in the camp of nuclear energy / fuelcell cars. But at this point if you want a high capacity/ low weight / high current drawn battery u will need lithium
@@mvn4844 Then you are going to be impressed at the solid state approach that toyota is putting their main focus on lately. Fuel cells are interesting, and viable uses for thorium or heavier metals encapsulated for safety reasons that can't end up causing very bad accidents or dangerous side effects. You can really park alot of electrons across ultra thin surfaces and lightweight and affordable without running out of materials even.
@@truetech4158 Just because a corp is "focusing" on R&D doesn't change the physics & chemistry of battery efficiency. History is filled with people who claim big things, look are Ponds & Fleishman and their "Cold Fusion" project.
@@truetech4158 Have any off those "battery options'' been shown to work and produced outside of lab conditions? If not i wouldnt get my hopes up just yet, at best they will be 10+ years away from now. And that is only if they dont fall into the unusable category like all other battery revelations from the last 30 years
@@terrydavis8451 Well, i did make mention of the use of super thin surfaces that can be flooded with electrons, we're talking gas disposition thin coatings, nano thin and scalar, feasible and proven already and now being scaled up for production, and that is nothing like the example from history involving cold fusion really, lol.
The dude camped out is definitely detached from reality in some ways but he also has a really good point about how we never talk about reducing consumption and population. The earth is over capacity and we’re spreading our western civilization ideologies (with rampant consumerism) around the world.
In reality current civilization is more detached from reality than someone living in a tent. Urbanization never considers the central bank of ecology that funds everything we do with resources.
What is the difference between burning fuel in your car and burning coal and oil in the electrical power station to charge your lithium batteries. "Clean cars" are not clean, when 90% of energy is made like this.
I think the search for what's best for transportation and the environment is going to take many years to figure out... That being said, your options right now are: mine for oil or mine for lithium. Choose the lesser of 2 evils so whichever one has the least carbon footprint wins even though both options suck.
There’s always going to be an environmental concern, and its good to think about the externalities more thoroughly, but that should not be the reason to stop exploiting the natural environment for technological advancement and productivity growth, it just mean that the society as a whole need to weigh it carefully and make those exploitation in a more responsible and far sighted way, better understanding all its potential consequences. After all, productivity is what drive us forward, without modern industries, science as we know it, including biology would not exist, and we won’t even have those insight on ecosystems and species that we have today.
Nope. You being able to text in ur 4k Supersmart ass phone and drive a electric car to eat some stupid vegan meat is NOT the right way to move forward. I find it said that you are literally finding ways to justify explioting land and Earth. We literally have to make infrastructure for clean energy for these vehicles we don't have. Sorry the future isn't like a lot of movies make it seem like
What is productivity if it's harmful to people and perpetuates inequality? That kind of "productivity" is unethical and oppressive. Our sustainable future is not truly benefitting humanity if it's not inclusive and equitable.
I don’t believe we always need to progress forward. What more do you hope to achieve through mining and destroying the natural places around us, for “progress”?
Aaannnd toxicity goes from A to B but doesn't disappear at all. Ultimately the less humans on earth the better. Our consumption is the problem. The environmental activist guy has solid points.
6:00 well there's a very good reason for that. That basically saying and admitting that human lives doesn't matter in a grand scheme of things. That's a huge red flag for humanity as a whole. Ironically that's the harsh truth that a lot of people never want to realize
This is a bad take, and makes poor assumptions (understandably based off of poor editing/journalism with respect to that line). Overpopulation is a real problem. There are still plenty of families all around the world with 5+ children, and in reality that's not needed and will harm us in the long run. While every human life is potentially important, that doesn't mean we need to saturate every part of the world with humans because that would mean certain death either by exhaustion of resources, crime, etc. We need to focus on the people that are already here, not the 6th child of each mother potentially changing the world one day. We are already on a crash course for overpopulation. And if we get to that point, it will be hard to come back from. We very much need to control the amount of people coming into the world through contraceptives or even legislation if necessary. I agree this may be a hot take for me, but it wont be such a hot take when overcrowding starts to affect each person personally in a matter of years. We have already seen the population exponentially rising and with that comes environmental and economic issues that will follow its trajectory.
The fact is we will need to sacrifice some environments, It is my humble opinion that we should prioritize keeping rarer, more irreplaceable environments safe first. the boreal forest in Canada and Asia for example is vast and lacks biodiversity. infact the boreal forest shouldn't even exist as they are the remnants of a destroyed ecosystem, an area that less than 10,000 years ago was a massive savanna-like steppe, however the hunting of mammoths caused the steppe to turn into unproductive boreal forest. the fact that boreal forest does almost nothing for our biosphere means that we should take advantage of it rather than the rainforests that are half a billion years old. infact evidence suggests one of the only ways to reverse climate change would be to destroy the boreal forest and allow it to become a steppe with massive numbers of grazing herbivores and maybe one day we could bring back mammoths to keep it sustainable. Of course i would hope that people would do research before accepting my ideas, but the fact is that humans have caused a mass extinction twice within the last 10,000-20,000 years, once when we cause all the megafauna to die off and now when we are targeting the ancient ecosystems near the equator. over 90 species of frog have went extinct in the last 50 years and that is what we have confirmed, hundreds of species we haven't discovered have been wipe off this planet.
People here are talking about nuclear power being the best option, yes but not the nuclear power stations as we know it. Smaller versions spread over a large distance is much safer than multiple large ones in terms of potential failure.
Nuclear is already incredibly safe as it is. Even factoring in high profile incidents like Chernobyl it kills less people per year/decade than gas or coal. Small personal reactors aren't going to be a thing for a long time. No sense in ignoring the technology until then when it's already safer than the alternatives.
@@JM-mr6lv Coal doesnt kill people instantly, it reduces peoples life expectancy, say from 85 to 82, which is an excellent thing, nuclear kills everyone, young old if there is a disaster, a 20 year old losing life is far more tragic than a 82 year old who dies 3 years earlier due to air pollution, false equivalence
@@jake42731 More die from coal mining accidents every year than have ever died directly from nuclear accidents from nuclear reactors in the technology's entire history. Even comparing direct, immediate deaths for both sources Nuclear is by far still the safest option.
@@JM-mr6lv And coal has provided more energy in one year than nuclear has in the past 10 years, im not denying nuclear is safer than coal, im saying simply comparing deaths doesnt do numbers justics, say 10,000 people die from suicides and 20,000 people die from cancer, idiots will think cancer is a bigger issue since more people die, but no cancer deaths almost exclusively affects elderly while suicides can affect any age group, so in terms of good years lost, one suicide is many times more valuable,
As a biology student, I can definitely see both perspectives on this. I’m not claiming to be an expert but I think it would be best for the lithium to be mined in the US. If we don’t do it, some other country with no environmental regulations will. As long as the land is repaired during and after it’s done being mined, then I think the benefit is worth it. It is a difficult reality nonetheless that mining more is sadly part of going “green” in the long run.
Just Doin Florida those other countries are going to do it anyway. The only thing this changes is to the price of Lithium. It makes batteries cheaper for us in the US. Whether we mine it here or not is going to have little impact on mining around the world for the stuff, since we are not the only ones to use it and demand for lithium is only going to keep growing.
In Portugal, our gvmt is selling out parts of our natural parks to multimillionaire international companies. We've been fighting them off with protests with only a couple of thousands of people, but eventually their dishonest tactics will run over us and our small country will impacted by this faster that you can say "Tesla". Think these money-oriented companies are worried about Portugal's nature when we're ourselves plagued by decades of incompetent environmental management?
If the mine is carefully made and carefully restored yes I agree with you. But like one guy said in the video we now have thousands of abandoned mines in the US that are currently being restored because of carelessness of the companies in the past. We can’t just have faith that the companies will do more than the bare minimum to ensure the environment is safe. We should push the companies to have strict plans for restoration and see to it that they stay true to their word
@@MrMrannoying Companys will do less then the bare minimum, anything they can get away with to increase profits. Only way to stop it is massive fines for non compliance
spectrum.ieee.org/energy/batteries-storage/lithiumion-battery-recycling-finally-takes-off-in-north-america-and-europe It is possible to recycle, but the investments need to be high because there's not a lot of recycling plants in North America and we could honestly use a lot more of them due to our high use of lithium.
It already exists, it's just somewhat crappier than lithium ion. In particular, it's much heavier (for the same amount of watt hrs stored). That's really bad for cars, but might be less of an issue for short term storage (eg hoard excess from solar panels during day, then discharge during night).
@@pierrecurie this is what MIT wants to do with their ambient temperature sodium sulfur batteries. It's a cheaper alternative to lithium ion batteries where mobility isn't a concern.
It'll be 2 years before you guy start crying over the fish for some reason or other... and start typing two line comments on youtube for what the energy sector of the world should or should not be doing
Completely disagree with the conspiracy speculation or desire for depopulation but 100% agree that driving electronic cars will not impact climate change to the degree we need it to
Electric & hybrid is worse. Petroleum wells have already been dug for gasoline & diesel. Oh wait diesel tractors are used for the digging of lithium & diesel trucks are used to transport lithium to factories that are generally powered by coal & fossil fuels to produce lithium. Why not just keep using fossil fuels. I enjoy my diesel pickup trucks.
you dug up a beautiful land and destroy its animal habitat to extract lithium... then you charge those batteries with electricity comes from burning fossil fuels or etc... so detrimental effect is bidirectional....
High iq take from this is that we should seriously look into asteroid mining. Asteroids can have massive accumulations of valuable metals and we wont have to deal with destroying our planet in the process.
Indeed, I've been looking into future investment opportunities regarding this whether it be R&D, speculation, or extraction. Companies get bought and merged so quickly though, and it's murky in these early days. Do you happen to have any information on the topic? It's appreciated.
And how do you get it to Earth? That would take enormous resources, huge amounts of rockets to bring back a meaningful amount. Look at what it took to get a tiny sample of an asteroid on the way back to Earth. Not a viable option anytime soon.
@@sadpepe7937 No it's not an immediate solution to anything, even something shallow like making money. But our grandchildren will certainly be very much aware of it's immediate potential, and those who wisely got involved in key aspects of the industry will be the next Gates, Rothschild, etc. (Financially speaking).
((...we do know what makes life worth living. The people ...loved and they were loved. They were mothers and fathers; they were husbands and wives; sisters and brothers; sons and daughters; friends and neighbors. They had hopes for the future and they had dreams that were not yet fulfilled. And if there’s anything to take away from this …it’s the reminder life is very fragile. Our time here is limited and it is precious. And what matters at the end of the day is not the small things, it’s not the trivial things, which so often consume us and our daily lives. Ultimately, it’s how we choose to treat one another and how we love one another. It’s what we do on a daily basis to give our lives meaning and to give our lives purpose. That’s what matters. At the end of the day, what we’ll remember will be those we loved and what we did for others. That’s why we’re here.)) - President Obama 🔥 🔥
There’s so many other promising battery technologies with greater potential than lithium. Aluminum ion being in the headlines most recently. You’d think the obvious solution would be to throw a massive amount of cash to develop them
you can't make science work just by throwing cash at it. trust me, if something had signs of working, all the investors would be pouring money into it in order to profit from it
@@therealestg9 We went to the moon in less than a decade. Granted the Nazis gave us a head start. A green new deal can transform the entire renewable industry if it was funded properly.
@@yoked1234 Going to the moon was not solved by throwing cash at a situation. Research took time, and it culminated in that. I agree we should be funding green technology, but you can't just throw money at stuff and then base your calculations off of that. The IPCC does not factor in prospective technology in their reports or planning. We have to go off of what we have, if a breakthrough happens, then well that's great.
@@arjund.4817 R&D is hard and not practical for private Capitol when shareholders demand to see profits now. When you look at breakthrough tech it usually comes from public institutions with public funding. If we funded R&D with massive spending there would be results.
A couple of points. First, there are lithium deposits elsewhere in North America, such as in Appalachia, where mining has a much more powerful cultural sway. I'm sure those areas would be happy to have that economic activity. Second, other, newer battery chemistries, such as aluminum ion, are in development, which will change the situation entirely if they become available. Aluminum ion batteries in particular show promise in a number of areas, both in terms of raw materials, because we already have gigatons of aluminum in the market, and because bauxite mines are well developed. Aluminum recycling is also well understood. Because there is so much aluminum in the market, it is dirt cheap compared to lithium. If you want to make something dirt cheap then make it out of dirt.
I think the population question is something that deserves discussion now, and not in 20 years when we feel that should've had the conversation 50 years ago.
The population question has sort of already been solved in the developed world. When people get a decent living they usually stop having 10 kids, more like 1-2 or even none.
@@lulu-gt6kl consider what percentage of the population represents "the developed world", and you may notice that no, not really, almost noone is talking about taking steps for population reduction. Not even in the developed world.
Lithium is used for so many more things than just electric vehicles. I wonder if the narrative to the environmentalists in this story would have changed if they were forced to consider what other uses lithium has than just cars
@@chaosXP3RT haha....right....these people are completely fine when it comes to save a desert, which has one of the lowest biodiversities........but meanwhile millions of hectares of amazonian and borneo's tropical rainforests are cut to produce palm oil and ethanol.....which is saving the environment.. according to them..
This was an interesting video. I think you got a fairly wide view of the situation but I would also take a look at the situation of the river downstream of there and general water requirements and waste disposal techniques. The devil is in the details. Also if you are mining there already, is there other metals that can be found along side the lithium? Can the mine do double duty somehow?
Being someone who's lived on and off in Nevada my whole life, it makes me sad how much of the land has been stripped. The wild mustangs that are left are all starving,I haven't seen a Mojave tortoise since I was a kid, and the area from the great basin to Vegas is quickly running out of water.
Too many spoiled people crammed into an area that was already weak. The collapse of the southwest is basically inevitable. It's merely a matter of time. With the changing climate and human impact. Not to mention the Midwest is bound to collapse with rainforest as the north American desserts will expand. An as of the east coast, I can't say, but people must either choose saving the climate and leaving the planet in effort to preserve it or our children's children will not have a planet to call home.
The market for lithium is a global one. If it isn’t mined here, it is mined elsewhere. Likely where there are less regulations and so an even worst impact.
EXACTLY
This is the actual truth
Shhhh, how dare you speak the truth!
I feel for natives living on the reservations. Less regulations and the mining sites damages both the environment and their occuppacy ( both of the ecosystems and human genome ). Reservations for what? Deplete, Destroy, and Depopulate! That's their terminology of Reserve, for future exploitation and smart cities declaration! Includes control mechanisms.
@@glennjohnson2850 the MSHA and EPA both have regulatory authority on any mine in the United States including a reservation land. And also it would most likely help their community by providing well-paying jobs and a stable source of income. Check out the Navajo coal mine for more info.
Not so eco friendly is it! Sad part is they're ok with it as long as the mining goes on in 3rd world countries where they don't have to see it
Id rather have the mining take place here where it can be regulated
Classic not my back yard, not my problem.
It’s cognitive dissonance at its finest. You have to choose if you just want to lose some of the planet to Climate Change or lose all of it and go extinct.
@@NinjaThatLongboards least they would have to pay the workers
It's relatively eco friendly.
This all smells like a false choice: the need for cars should be reduced in the first place, say by building infrastructure for public transportation. I know that America is mostly built around cars and have poor public transport services.
exactly. In the US our infrastructure, especially the suburban lifestyle, was designed in a world for cars. I'm not saying I don't enjoy the freedom of movement that a car gives me, but our society can be restructured to reduce the need for cars. If we can't do that, then I guess stopping global warming from completely destroying human civilization by investing in EV's is our only other choice.
Good point.
dude recomends walking....doesnt even recommend horse or donkey drawn carts....cause of horse farts.....they will always hit a new low....
Well not all of us live in the city. Thank god
@@JakeSpivek this is exactly the problem. Environmentalists want change but do they take public transportation? No. They feel that them championing the cause is enough to wipe their carbon footprint. Leonardo di caprio is a prime example. How big are his houses? Owns a private jet. Numerous cars. His carbon footprint is enormous, almost as big as the hypocrite he is.
So i do environmental Life Cycle Analysis's (LCA's) for a living. If there is lithium or copper in the product then the product emissions glow like a christmas tree in comparison to anything else. So I am pretty torn as electric cars are far better for CO2 production, but terrible for things like water toxicity. Climate change is the issue of the day where the Ozone was the last generations issue. Water Toxicity will be the next generations issue.
As for mines. If the company pays for and enacts a proper reclamation plan. Then the issue is being overstated. However even American mining companies are kinda sleazy so I can understand why people are annoyed. Also that land really does look pretty
If there is one word people need to start associating with sustainability it is not *green* it's *nuance* . No solution even solar or wind or nuclear is perfect. And you need to look at the tradeoffs of current options and pick the best one for that location and application. Also what is best today may not be true a year from now as technologies evolve.
Even if the mining company picks up the tab for the reclamation, those costs just get passed on to the taxpayers in the form of higher prices of Lithium batteries. There's no free ride.
@@DietTimboSlicesee you are calling that a raised price. I call it the base price. Everyone else be skimping on morals and ethics
If we all live on asteroids or Mars, we don't have to worry about wildlife or the environment
@@chaosXP3RT Why stop there? Why not imagine a world where we live in a post-money post-war Star Trek universe? Anything is possible if you're delusional enough.
@@steviewonderisnotblind5833 Well mining asteroids and terraforming Mars for human-habitation in the next 200-300 years seems much more possible and viable and healthy for the human race than some fantasy like Communism or Star-Trek or god forbid some plan to control the human population growth
I’d love a documentary on Canada’s “responsible” diamond mining. Apparently if you don’t want a blood diamond, your next bet is to buy a Canadian diamond. Edit: just to clarify - I’m not fascinated by diamonds, but I was researching diamond jewelry a few months ago and fell into the wormhole of google “research”. So far I’ve learnt that there are very few mines in the African continent that follow any labor safety standards; lab grown diamonds are as good as natural diamonds; the price of diamonds are over inflated by the Belgian diamond monopoly (like De Beers) and they keep the supply artificially low by hoarding the diamonds (apparently); and if you really must have a natural diamond, Canada is the next best destination, after the African countries to purchase a conflict less diamond.
Or one made in a lab
... or just don’t buy diamonds that are pretty much worthless? Diamond prices are way over inflated
Just buy used diamonds
industrial diamonds are all the same as real ones, just get one of those or just don't get any. Diamonds are pretty but really no point in investing in them.
@@Michael-lu2tz people like shiny things especially if it has social value
Engineer here. Cradle to grave, mining coal versus mining ALL the resources for solar/batteries (copper, lithium, cobalt, etc) leads to EIGHT THOUSAND times more mining for coal. The choice isn't "mine lithium or don't". The choice is "mine lithium or mine 8000 times more coal per kWh". See my recent video on misinformation in renewables where I discuss this in greater detail. It's sad, but our choices are literally "destroy small localized parts of the planet" to transition to a green economy, or "destroy the entire planet and go extinct". Combine that with the fact that this mine is re-habing the area after mining, and I believe these "environmentalists" impeding this work are actually eco-terrorists, and I say that as a passionate environmentalist.
"Easy for you to say you live in a van"
That guy seems like a nutcase regardless of where he lives.
Not a van. He's "living in a Tent ⛺ in the desert 🏜️"
@@everythingisfine9988 not down by a river.
I know easy for the reporter to say he lives a selfish sinful life. The van guy is living in the ruthless desert to help the world and the children.
@@thewaywordfool lol this was missed by most. RIP Chris Farley
That was basically a piece of "not in my backyard"
Over here in Australia, we now have environmentalists trying to block a wind farm project in Tasmania. They're pulling the very same tropes used by conservatives who are anti-wind power; "bird blenders", "pristine views ruined", "shadowing", "exploding turbines", and "wind turbine sickness".
Exactly
@@jonathantan2469 well honestly if they went with a solar farm it would produce more electricity and look better
the left continues to be its own worst enemy lol
@@jonathantan2469 It's funny becuase the things you listed are true though. They aren't conservatives. They're environmentalists; real environmentalists.
People are going to have to give up something at some point. There's no reason everyone has to have a five seater car at their disposal 24/7/365 to have parked somewhere more than 80% of the tiime.
100% but people won't be so quick to give up convenience. Lithium isn't the answer. It never was. Once you peel back the marketing there's a massive hole in the Earth somewhere, and pollution running off into waterways, emissions from production and shipping etc. Hydrogen was always the better of the 3 but even still. The concept of urban mobility needs a massive rethink. How many SUV's and cars do we see with 1 person in them during traffic?
@Yoo Wat pub trans, shared cars, carpooling, etc
@Yoo Wat if only there's another way to go to your workplace, I wonder what that might be
God I hate seeing lone Karen's hopping out of massive trucks that they 100% do not use for anything but groceries. Its sickening.
@@antoinedoinell It's all one big Gordian knot of car stakeholders, "convenience", inertia...but it will have to end by hook or by crook.
This is why industrial environmentalism can’t save us. We are just shifting industry to tax a different set of resources we’re not talking about reduction of resource usage
@Peace Frog there is no realistic solution.
i’m just saying that industrialized environmentalism is just trying to repackage the same problem with a different bow.
the only way would be to change our economy to be base on communal subsistence instead of consumer capitalism, de-industrializing where we can, and socializing basic resources (like water and food). This would mean giving up many of the modern amenities that we enjoy. But like you said, good luck getting rid of greed. the socialist revolutions of the 1960’s tried to do this.. and many failed due to international opposition and also internal corruptions. and they we only trying to fix class inequality... the sheer amount of social coordination required to address climate change is impossible for people to organize on a national scale
there’s no answer, all we can do is wait for the gradual collapse of nation-states and try to prepare to survive it.
It's a misconception to think that lithium mining will be just there to supply luxury EV manufacturers. We eventually need lithium for any type of road vehicle, including the millions of commercial vehicles that keep the world running. Even if we would manage to drastically reduce consumerism in general, which I totally agree on, we still need vehicles to transport goods and people around.
I am an environmentalist. I went vegan 7 years ago to reduce my carbon footprint and I drive a fully electric vehicle (Nissan Leaf). I am privileged to be in a place with many EV charging stations. But even I agree this kind of protest is asinine. These people that want to stop the mine have hardly even thought about how to handle agriculture on a mass scale. Sure reduced population through voluntarily not having children will help a bit but not if it means big rigs, airplanes, ships, or trains cannot transport goods. If we want to get away from the use of fossil fuels we *need* a reliable alternative. Battery technology is our next best alternative.
I think it's a huge false dichotomy to say that we either need to keep relying on fossil fuels, or produce hundreds of millions of electric cars and trucks. The solution is going to need to involve massively expanded public transportation, rail, biking, and walking infrastructure to let as many people as possible not need cars at all. The idea of everyone getting around in privately owned individual cars of any kind is simply not sustainable. This is not a problem that can be solved with individual decisions to simply drive a different car, its going to need us as a society to collectively resteer off the path of urban sprawl and car dependence we've been on since WW2.
@@MagnumCarta Why don't environmentalists end their carbon footprint for good? Oh they're all greedy narcissistic assholes. C02 isn't causing global warming any more than the farts coming out of your mouth.
@@tuckerbugeater Cool story bro.
@@meckhardt2112 Exactly, batteries will also play a massive role in public transportation.
I like how this journalist asks tough questions to everyone even though he’s a little biased
The journalist should question the environmental responsible
Method?
And where is the H20 will come from ? OREgoN?
*they need to learn* how to get it from Ocean Salt, and replant Coastal Redwoods 🙏😭
yes.
would also like to point out the severe lack of recycling facilities present in america.... such a shame we don't want to lead the world in that.
agree
@@noir66146 Recycling is dirty and ineffective in the grand scheme of things. We should definitely have more local recycling plants but of the 3 Rs recycle is the last for a reason
@@nate998877 well litium recycling is quite efficient even in its infancy. And all governments are investing.
You wanna show me where you get lithium from sea water? Pretty sure it doesnt contain lithium in any concentration.
“Green” now that’s a STRETCH
Everything that is advertised as a green alternative is about as green as the colour blue.
@@joshuasweeney1159 It's sad people still don't understand the difference between marketing and academic fact.
I work with the rail industry, and some of our clients are various mining companies. The renewables & green tech boom is actually fuelling the mining & resources sector. More mines are being opened up across the lands to extract the minerals needed to make the solar panels, Tesla batteries, wind turbines, & e-vehicles. Ironically, this also includes coking coal & natural gas. They are used as raw materials to produce the chemicals & purify elements for the production chain...
Yeah the green stuff is pretty dumb
I still don’t understand why we don’t go nuclear
well, for starters, the problem here is power storage, not production. nuclear cars are a really bad idea. but for power production, while there are a lot of promising designs being proposed, it still has problems and not a great track record. and before you jump to 'modern designs are better!', all the claims people have regarding how safe and cheap new designs have.. well, people also said those things about the old designs. it is easy to praise things that have not had a chance to go wrong yet.
Lithium is for batteries. Not power generation
7 mile, Chernobyl, Fukushima is why, people get scared
Most people are scared, and those are likely the people that don't know how nuclear energy works. The other reason is that nuclear has a high upfront cost that sways away most governments and private companies. Nuclear in the long run is more cost efficient and reliable than other sources of energy, but it is not profitable in the short term. People don't care about the long run, they want answers now. Also, what a lot of these "environmentalist" miss is the fact that no matter what source of energy we have, we will need some form of storage, which is why lithium is being used. We can be 100% renewable and still need batteries for storage.
Keeping aside that you still need something to store the nuclear energy in, You still have nuclear waste to deal with. Nuclear waste takes hundreds of years to fully decay
EDIT: I'm actually wrong, correction in comments
The argument that electric cars will reduce emissions is also redundant in most of the world, because in most places the electricity you use to charge your car is generated using fossil fuels.
So many ppl don't understand this...
More electric cars means there is a consumer of electricity at the expense of fossil fuel consumers. That electricity should be provided by renewable sources. These two aspects are complementary, certainly electricity can also be produced from fossil fuels, but if it can be obtained from renewable sources it is much better that there are more electric and less combustion cars around. For example, in Oslo (Norway), which is the EU's green capital, 93.4% of the nation's electricity is produced by hydroelectric power plants. In addition, there are many incentives for electric vehicles and related infrastructures.
@@giovannipelissero1886 argument makes no sense. Until energy storage competes with fossil fuels (ie gas fired peakers) the majority of power supplying the grid (where evs will get their power...) will come from fossil fuel sources. Please don't send me a citation/quote from some clean energy lobby group.
@@giovannipelissero1886 Yea, I'm from New Zealand, and here about 85% of our electricity is renewable, so the electricity charging the electric cars here is from renewable sources. But you can't tell me electric cars make sense in Germany, where they're constantly opening up new coal mines to meet their electricity demands. I completely agree that there should be a switch to renewable electricity generation, but you can't say that in the meantime, electric cars are still worthwhile/driving a change to renewable electricity.
If you want to reduce fossil fuel use on the grid, you need lithium battery storage to serve demand when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine.
“I love electric vehicles, it’s the future”
“60% of the worlds cobalt comes from the Congo where they use children as slaves”
*Silence, sips Starbucks*
most new chemistry doesn't rely on cobalt. Everything has cost if you see it or not. best thing we can do for the planet is have less or no children.
@@nicholaskeenan898 partially agree but I believe the best thing we can do for humanity is become a multi planetary species.
There's a lot going into reducing cobalt and possibly to eventually remove it. Change is a given we as humans must either try or fade into obscurity. But I'm willing to bet most people are not willing to completely give up there modern amenities. Every society has been built on bodies, it's up to you too decide between death or growth. It is important for our planet and especially our species to move past this pale blue dot, it is the only way to preserve it without mass death on a relatively fast scale geographically speaking.
EVs or no EVS, if you want to be sanctimonious about cobalt, it's in your phone, your computer, your gas car, the register at Starbucks, and most things with processors or semiconductors
Yup.
I think the thing that a lot of people don't consider when problem solving is that solutions will not be instant. We will have to go through many rough, inefficient, and honestly bad iterations before we're where we want to be.
Until we are there… could we maybe have cheaper petrol? Like he said, “There are ways to mine materials safer than and cleaner.”
Why isn’t that logic applied to natural gas/crude oil
2 words:nuclear power.That's the only solution for a carbon free future.
Right.... Gee I wonder how much concrete is needed to encase all the stupidly toxic waste that produces. Nulcear definitely has reason to exist, but it's hardly carbon free.
the problem of power production is orthogonal to the problem of power storage.
Environmentalist will respond with two word: nuclear waste
Exactly what does nuclear power have to do with this video?
or a thorium salt reactor, the reason we use the reactors we use today, is the by-product is used to make nuclear weapons, thorium salt reactors produce less waste and can self encase the core in salt in the event of a meltdown. UA-cam it when you get a chance, fascinating stuff
Finally, an environmental paradox!!
This
Lithium Nevada is owned by Lithium Americas Corp [NYSE: LAC], which owns Thacker Pass 100% as well as 49% of a lithium mine being built with Ganfeng in Argentina which should be producing next year. LAC recently raised $400 million and now has $500 million cash on hand available to fund Thacker Pass.
Cha Ching ! Ticker alert! I’ve been following lithium for awhile..
Ight imma start tracking that stock, thx for the ticker
good thing you have a search button, thanks for wiki for us i guess
“Standing Rock situation” and “indigenous burials”
Dropping the ball on members of every northern Nevada tribe gathering to oppose the mine. Let’s see if Vice News cares of enough for people who actually live/lived there.
Indigenous oppose because they get money. Most western mining companies have to pay some indigenous tribe these days.
@@tubester4567 As they should, since they are affected by the operations of the mining companies not to mention all the loss of land they had to suffer over the centuries. They should be getting a lot more tbh.
@Fact Checker jr what's a yuppie? Curious.
@@tubester4567 Well the Navajo got fucked over when they were mining uranium in the 40s... Poisoned their water supplies and gave lots of people cancer. All because the dust in the air was irradiated and the blew it towards them.
I’ve grown and lived in norther nevada my entire life, sadly what you never learn in the midst of all the “boom bust” luster, the mass deforestation of northern nevada. The grease wood wasn’t as good as much of the wood used deeper into California so they had to cut down more of it to create the charcoal to smelt the metals. The mountains the Humbolt to California were nearly stripped, which helps make nevada appear as just a desert. All that if that combined makes it seem like Nevada is just untouched potential, in reality to make a sustainable living in this environment is very difficult and the path we’ve sent ourselves down as an economy based on service and distribution in this state, to try and mine the lithium to solve a mass movement issue seems pointless. Nevada has tons of driving to be done to get around and through the state. As long as folks keep coming into this area for the sake of sucking up a quick profit out of the ground, this state will be just a backwater desert for private business and military weapons testing. All while the people occupying the states borders are wondering how their energy problems will be solved with the answers in our own back yard.
80% of Nevada is federal property anyways. And Nevada has been getting nuked and bombs dropped on it since 1945. Nevada's lithium is more important to the USA geopolitically than it is to Nevada's people. Sorry, but Nevada has always been dealt a bad hand and it will get more until the Colorado River dries up and everyone flees the state.
@@chaosXP3RT “Federal” being public. You can drive your vehicles and over most of these mountains unlike lots of places. The “federal” and “public” terms is a bit confusing when you do consider the weapons used in that space. I’m in the north so the issue here is drought through lack of precipitation to fill reservoirs, and the diverting of water for agriculture which in turn doesn’t directly help sustain these communities. Most of this stuff is exported, the area used to be famous for the cantaloupe export. The greater good of the gold and silver mining industries pale in comparison to the development of alcoholism, prostitution, domestic abuses, and everything else that associated this state with a place called “Sin City”. All for the sake of a currency no longer involved with it. The simple argument is that the quick hurry to yank more resources out of this area for the sake of trying to justifiably fix an issue, be it backing to fight a war or Or to help put a dent in a global climate issue, this isn’t a start at all. We just passed legislation here to protect the “dark sky” areas, just to have a short “job creating” opportunity pop up near those areas. The countless abandoned mines through the state and the completely standing ghost towns full of equipment is a testament of how business is done here, where generations of children will grow up. I’d rather it service the fact that we have to be a center piece for the American southwest for the sake of mass distribution hubs and the “Largest industrial center in the world” being USA Parkway, contributing to the climate crisis here. How about all the vehicles leaving this area become the electric vehicles we need since they are driving hundreds of miles just to hit the next state line. The amounts of lithium that will be used for selling cars that will be beyond expensive for the working class, doesn’t really help anyone. It’s a false perception of help.
I’m Nevadan too. But lithium, cobalt and other battery necessities are going to become essential. Possibly as big as a national security. If we can overthrow a democracy (Bolivia) and destroy the lives of natives, we can dig up our own lands. Wars are coming and we can’t be tied up in a desperate reliance on other countries.
Yeah, we need to reduce. We need to stop pretending that an electric car is some kind of moral and environmental gain. We need to limit environmental damage. But we also need to stop outsourcing the environmental destruction that feeds a first world lifestyle. Vegas keeps the state in the black at a terrible cost, the kind you can’t see as easily as starving foals being shot in pens like with the grazing lands, this is just one of those externalities.
@@vysharra that is also the side argument, it’s all perception of use. It’ll be big bucks and necessary while we keep pushing this “electric car” movement, at the same time we mass consume. Either way it’ll be done because these are the seeds we’ve sown. I grew up in fallon, I could ride a bike from end to end of that town. Making people consume for the sake of healthy stocks is the ideal for a free market, how can you justify destroying stocks and also limit living by reducing the consumption practices. Again quite the predicament for the “governed” when it comes down to it
The people of the southwest and anyone who joins em will have to look around some times and see that they're in an empire that only uses them for resource on land stolen from them. Hell, the original Latino inhabitants are even still the majority in most of the southwest long after it was colonized, along with remaining tribes that survived the genocides, people just need to realize the southwest must take its destiny into its own hands. Stop letting all of the resources get sucked right up to DC and the pockets of the corps that own it.
Takes 2 million litres of clean water to produce a ton of lithium, ask the Bolivian farmers who don't have any groundwater left
Thanks, was actually wondering what are the waste products of such type of mining...
There is no such thing as “green growth”.
"Going Green" isn't 'Green'
The irony
The thing is that oil also needs to be extracted from the ground, transported, refined and then transported again to your local gas station. This entire process makes just as much, if not more pollution than lithium mining. Almost all oil wells that were easily accessible are now empty, so modern oil extraction comes from oil sand and very deep wells, which make the oil extraction process even worse. Also, the next generation of electric car batteries (called solid state batteries) won't need rare metals like lithium or cobalt and they will be easier to recycle. I don't know the details about all car manufacturers, but Mercedes will purchase all its solid state batteries from a Canadian company starting in 2022
We had the same thing years ago with hydro power dams. It was supposed to be free green energy and now due to the massive damage caused we are taking them out. Buy less. Drive less. Repair and dont replace. Its better for the environment to keep your old vehicle than to buy a new electric car. So no. We dont need to keep destroying our planet. And i believe we should also have strict regulations for how we obtain materials from other countries as well
@@PG-3462 Oil is still very easily extractable with very little pollution required, the burning of it is what causes the pollution.
@@ThexXxXxOLOxXxXx If you live in North America, the oil you consume either comes from the oil sands of Alberta or from deep wells located in the USA. The USA became the biggest oil producer a few years ago because deep oil extraction was approved. As a result, if you live in North America, an electric car is definitively better. It is even more where I live (Province of Quebec) since 100% of our electricity comes from hydropower
@@PG-3462 but its the same with lithium it takes carbon and alot of energy to mine the lithium then to transport it to a sorting plant then to the factories then back to the consumers
7:52 "fast-tracked" I worked for the EPA. Fast-tracked means one of two things:
1. You can have your project moved to the head of the line by paying an extra application fee, or 2. Your project moves to the head of the line thanks to political clout. Sometimes both occur to get lightening fast fast-tracked.
The irony is that these environmentalists here drive gasoline cars which have immense environmental costs, but want to grandstand about the least harmful option moving forward. As long as the mine is cleaned up as they move forward, that’s fair.
Almost went to jail for anti Gold mining in New Zealand a few years back but it was literally happening in my backyard. If people want to help the environment the easiest answer is public transport. Individual ownership of cars is the main problem but nobody wants to give up their ride for the earth not in this society that values wealth of possessions & greed over everything.
Hippy
@@daveanderson3805 Nah just a realist ignoring the excesses of our consumer society is the usual mindset of most people i am guessing you included & that's fine we won't be around to clean up the mess exactly like we are cleaning or at least trying to clean the chemical waste & refuse from industry that our parents & Grandparents left for us they never imagined when dumping Millions of Tons of hazardous materials into oceans that it would come back to bite us either or that the Refuse tips would be uninhabitable for humans for hundreds or even thousands of years buts thats whats happening.
@@daveanderson3805 You know what they say about Ad Hominems.
@@dColorOfBoom he may not even know what Ad Hominem means without Google 👍
its not always greed when you want to own something and have it as your possessions
As a fifty something year old who grew up in California, some of the earliest memories of the news I have are hearing about the giant oil spill that devastated the coastline around Santa Barbara, one of the most beautiful places in the state. A half century later, the world has seen endless marvels of technological innovation, but the pace of ecological devastation has only accelerated on most fronts. If technological innovation had anything to do with averting our ecological crises, I think we might have seen more signs of success on that front by now.
This!!!!
Where's the doc on how these batteries are made???
Really depends on the battery technology you want to learn about. But if you simply search on UA-cam for "How Lipo battieries are made" you'll find many many videos that explain it. :) Cheers!
"200,000 abandoned mines across the United States." And the vast majority of those were created before any modern mining laws. It irks me when environmentalists harp on this, because those mines were created before we had any idea of the environmental consequences.
Exactly. Any development is generally bad, but with intense governmental oversight, mines can be quite clean.
The environmental impact of producing and disposing of EV batteries is so much greater than a gasoline engine will ever be in its lifecycle.
Electric vehicles are NOT green, nor environmentally friendly. So the politicians pushing that they are, are either lying or ignorant to the facts. Here are some facts that the global warming alarmists either don't know or are turning a blind eye to in the hopes that you never know.
Producing an electric vehicle contributes, on average, twice as much to global warming potential and uses double the amount of energy than producing a combustion engine car, and this is mainly because of its battery. Battery production uses a lot of energy, from the extraction of raw materials to the electricity consumed in manufacture. The bigger the electric car and its range, the more battery cells are needed to power it, and consequently the more carbon produced.
An electric vehicle is only as green as the electricity that feeds its battery. A coal-powered battery is dirtier than a solar-powered battery, but most people are ignorant of the source of energy that they use to charge their electric vehicle. Do you know?
Battery production also causes more environmental damage than carbon emissions alone. Considering dust, fumes, wastewater, and other environmental impacts from cobalt mining; water shortages and toxic spills from lithium mining is disastrous, which can alter ecosystems and hurt local communities. That area of the U.S is already struggling due to water shortages so where will they get the water source for this production plant?
While an electric vehicle has a higher carbon footprint at the beginning of its lifecycle, it is typically cleaner once in use. Studies show that over time, it can catch up on the combustion engine car. The point at which an electric vehicle’s lifetime emissions break even with a combustion engine car also depends on the car’s mileage...For example, in Germany - where about 40% of the energy mix is produced by coal and 30% by renewables - a mid-sized electric car must be driven for 125,000 km, on average, to break even with a diesel car, and 60,000 km compared to a gasoline car. It takes nine years for an electric car to be greener than a diesel car, assuming an annual average mileage of 13,500 km (as was the case in Germany in 2002, compared to 12,700 km in England in 2013). Most consumers will have bought a new car by then. The case is similar in the US. However, an EV battery will NEVER last that long!
When the capacity of electric car batteries drops below 70-80% after about 7 - 10 years of use, they are no longer strong enough to power the car. An estimated 11 million tons of spent lithium-ion batteries will flood our markets by 2025, without systems in place to handle them. This matters if we are to address climate change. Existing battery resources must be used as best as possible, to avoid pollution from toxic waste and secure a strong supply of raw materials at low environmental cost.
To recycle a battery, it currently costs €1 per kg. But the value of raw material reclaimed is only a third of that. Recycling lithium costs five times as much as extracting virgin material. Hence, only 5% of lithium-ion batteries are recycled in Europe.
@@pennynutter Humans as a whole are not very environmentally friendly.
Yes, much of the metals produced for electric vehicles still produce carbon because many of the machines are still carbon powered. However, that is changing, and the industry understands this must change to meet the demands of investors who want 'cleaner' energy. There are several mines planning an all-electric operation to come online soon. We cannot just flip a switch and move the entire economic supply chain away from carbon based fuel overnight, or even a decade. These things take time, but we will get there.
I am also not entirely sure of your argument here. From what you presented it seems like the attitude of "oh everything isn't perfect so we should just stick with carbon powered vehicles." What a pessimistic and closed-minded outlook.
Lastly "global warming alarmists," really? Do you work for BP or Shell? But then you talk about addressing climate change so which propaganda do you ascribe to?
The next mining boom is not oil, it's materials for batteries that ironically are environmental safer than combustible engines.
7:15 Dude, if you are gonna get all philosophical about it, then this debate will never end and we will never progress. Thank goodness, there exists more practical people who are willing to do stuff rather than these people who like to sit around philosophising.
You can extract lithium from ocean salts. Now you’re only problem is the energy needed.
Not viable as concentrion is too low that is why mining is effective the ore is concentrates lithium.
They don't have the filters yet. But they're close to solving it. Right now they do that but they have to dry it in giant ponds. And they're having trouble removing the magnesium from the lithium. So they only get 20% of it.
You can extract it from air too
The energy required to do this will release more carbon into the atmosphere than all the electric vehicles made with the lithium would have released in a whole lifetime as an ICE vehicle...
@@Joseph-C lol your right
There is a lithium project being worked on in Clayton Valley, next to Silver Peak, that is larger than LAC and may not need any sulfur at all. Using a chloride method of "table salt". Cypress Development. It will be a big name in the future, mark my words.
Lithium is my life giving medication... This is making me feel weird.
Me too 💜
These activists need to try some of that lithium. They are crazy for not seeing the potential of this mine
I hate this move to battery powered transportation. BEVs take too long to recharge, they catch fire more than any fossil fuel powered car ever has, and they don't fit our day-to-day way of life. As combustible as hydrogen is, the fuel cell is safer, refuels in just a few minutes, and when hydrogen is produced from water via electrolysis, it's vastly cleaner than lithium mining and doesn't destroy natural habitats in the process. Researchers are making breakthroughs with electrolyzed hydrogen faster than battery technology, so hydrogen fuel is on track to become as costly or less than petroleum fuels, and don't forget about energy density. Lithium batteries have less than 1 MJ/kg of energy, gasoline has ~45 MJ/kg, and hydrogen has ~130 MJ/kg; the less weight the energy source adds to the car, the more energy efficient the car is. BEVs use lithium cobalt oxide, cobalt is a rare earth metal, very expensive, and as the word *"rare"* implies, there isn't an abundance of it, so with all these battery electric vehicles using it all up, cobalt, and the battery tech, will become very scarce sooner than you think.
What everyone really should be focusing on first is switching from carbon power (e.g. coal, oil, natural gas) to nuclear power. Nuclear produces zero carbon emissions while it's in operation and provides up to a million times more energy per kilogram than fossil fuels. Solar and wind are fine...as a supplement, but they won't power everyone's homes and businesses 24/7 and they would take up an inordinate amount of space, and we'd still have to rely on batteries to get us through the dark and windless hours, not to mention all the habitats we'd have to destroy to make room for all these low-yield natural power generators.
electricityasia.wordpress.com/2017/05/03/comparing-energy-density-of-solar-wind-nuke-others/
This brings “not in my back yard” to a new level.
California?
Environmentalism has its role and place but when they start talking about population control and completely disregard practicality, they lose all credibility
@@eddyecho THIS^
@@eddyecho Hang on, how do they lose their credability? We are overpopulated, and that's a fact. I'm not sure why so many people lose their minds over this fact. Anthropologists have studied overpopulation in nature and their consequences. We are no different, but in fact we're worse due to our consumption levels. How are you people so obtuse?
@@eddyecho It's a fact that the world is overpopulated, don't shoot the messenger. It obviously isn't a very fun problem to talk about, and there aren't any agreeable solutions, but it is a problem.
From somebody that worked at a battery recycling plant before. There is not enough they can make from recycled batteries. I think they should make batterie recycling a lot easier. So more can do it.
almost anything a person does can hurt the environment so if you want to be a real environmentalist then take yourself out of the equation.
The point is not to totally avoid it. but to decrease the rate of process.
Oh look a antifa supporter
When I think about environmentalist I start thinking about how they are similar to anti-natalists. We should just stop having children and the world will just pass by without us doing any harm, but the environment will just naturally destroy itself with natural entities and other species. Then we go to fatalism, so everything is pointless.
We should all be gamers, we create activity with an objective and a set of rules to follow and we take it seriously, live life and have fun. Have children, change the environment for us while being mindful to share and live in harmony with the environment and other species.
the only livable way as i would very much enjoy is if we lived beneath the earth or above it in a space station. although not entirely possible but entirely cool. its the real option that we will probably be forced to consider one day and i wish we would just work on that instead.
This is ridiculous. The amount of surface land affected by mining is minuscule.
The real environmental impact of mining comes from water and air contamination due to the chemicals used in leaching and processing. If you can control those then mining poses basically no environmental risk.
Username checks out
Your statement is ridiculous. Electric vehicles are NOT green, nor environmentally friendly. So the politicians pushing that they are, are either lying or ignorant to the facts. Here are some facts that the global warming alarmists either don't know or are turning a blind eye to in the hopes that you never know.
Producing an electric vehicle contributes, on average, twice as much to global warming potential and uses double the amount of energy than producing a combustion engine car, and this is mainly because of its battery. Battery production uses a lot of energy, from the extraction of raw materials to the electricity consumed in manufacture. The bigger the electric car and its range, the more battery cells are needed to power it, and consequently the more carbon produced.
An electric vehicle is only as green as the electricity that feeds its battery. A coal-powered battery is dirtier than a solar-powered battery, but most people are ignorant of the source of energy that they use to charge their electric vehicle. Do you know?
Battery production also causes more environmental damage than carbon emissions alone. Considering dust, fumes, wastewater, and other environmental impacts from cobalt mining; water shortages and toxic spills from lithium mining is disastrous, which can alter ecosystems and hurt local communities. That area of the U.S is already struggling due to water shortages so where will they get the water source for this production plant?
While an electric vehicle has a higher carbon footprint at the beginning of its lifecycle, it is typically cleaner once in use. Studies show that over time, it can catch up on the combustion engine car. The point at which an electric vehicle’s lifetime emissions break even with a combustion engine car also depends on the car’s mileage...For example, in Germany - where about 40% of the energy mix is produced by coal and 30% by renewables - a mid-sized electric car must be driven for 125,000 km, on average, to break even with a diesel car, and 60,000 km compared to a gasoline car. It takes nine years for an electric car to be greener than a diesel car, assuming an annual average mileage of 13,500 km (as was the case in Germany in 2002, compared to 12,700 km in England in 2013). Most consumers will have bought a new car by then. The case is similar in the US. However, an EV battery will NEVER last that long!
When the capacity of electric car batteries drops below 70-80% after about 7 - 10 years of use, they are no longer strong enough to power the car. An estimated 11 million tons of spent lithium-ion batteries will flood our markets by 2025, without systems in place to handle them. This matters if we are to address climate change. Existing battery resources must be used as best as possible, to avoid pollution from toxic waste and secure a strong supply of raw materials at low environmental cost.
To recycle a battery, it currently costs €1 per kg. But the value of raw material reclaimed is only a third of that. Recycling lithium costs five times as much as extracting virgin material. Hence, only 5% of lithium-ion batteries are recycled in Europe.
Destroying smaller portions of the environment to save the entire planetary ecosystem seems like a no brainer.
Depends on where you live. No sacrifice is ever too big for someone else to make, so naturally the 'no brainier' is any solution where the speaker gives up nothing and someone somewhere else bares the cost... and that is what is going on in this story. The environmental cost is being born by one group so that another group does not have to make the sacrifice if reducing their growth.
when the guy says "reducing human population" what does he mean
The economic impact of digging up lithium mines is irrelevant when you consider the impact of explosive population growth that is occurring in places like India, China, and Africa.
Have you heard of the concepts of "carrying capacity" and "overshoot"? These are really important terms in ecology. I'd recommend checking out a book called "Overshoot" by Dr. William Catton. Great introduction to the issue of overpopulation. It's a problem that can be solved in a humane way. But first we need to educate ourselves on the issue and the need to address it.
having fewer babies not genocide. Africa and India are growing unsustainably and there could eventually be just too many mouths to feed.
@@harrypethel6388 they already have that problem, been having famine for decades and decades.
@@DietTimboSlice specifically China, their population is expected to halve in the near future.
Hobo dude nailed it. Reduce consumption and human population! Electric cars are just more destructive greed for goods.
Reduce consumption - yes. Reduce population - no. Population control has never worked and is inhumane. Just look at China's 1 child policy. That didnt stop them from becoming the world's largest polluter. Or compare the carbon footprint of Nigeria and Qatar. Consumption is the problem, not people
@@sandcastle1128 best way to reduce population is war which means a lot of consumption
@@jasongomez8835 Or disease. Spread quicker and kills faster than war.
On human population reduction him first.
@@sandcastle1128 Yeah, population control is sensitive. What to make of low birth rates in developed nations? Even upper middle class Chinese couples having one child as a choice now. Getting rich seems to slow population growth. So consume more to breed less. Paradoxic huh?
If we're sticking with the 'car' model there's no point in digging up the lithium. There is no car-based societal model that saves us from the worst effects of climate change. We need to be working on mass public transit solutions to have any hope of slowing climate change.
I haven't heard ANY politicians or planners speaking seriously about shifting away from the single-occupant vehicle dominated traffic model so leave the lithium where it is until we're ready to use it EFFECTIVELY.
you live in a plastic tent in the desert, you wear a plastic jacket made from oil... etc Save the world but knwow when and how to save it.
Is that because they want to buy plastic? Or because there are no feasible alternatives at the moment for scale? This is a strawman used by every anti environmentalist. “Oooh you say we should reduce technology while you’re on your iPhone what an idiot” There are no alternatives to the lifestyle that is shoved down our throats. Environmentalists are simply asking why aren’t there alternatives that are feasible. A lot of this is due to markets at the moment not having the means to make these alternatives cheaper. But society and govt at large have regulated life so much that in some areas a life of wanting less throws you to the side as an outcast and there is no chance in creating ‘alternative’ lifestyles that others can pursue that strive away from mass consumerism and greed. Living off the land without a footprint isn’t possible because the population is taxed and regulated so heavily that you must work a job and buy your living to stay alive and out of prison so instead you must abuse and profit off the land because that is the only feasible option that markets view land as useful for.
@@nolanyoung8786 Nimbyism is by far the most classist & racist thing you can do. The so called green movement is filled with people dumb enough to believe they are helping & part paid opposition. Why else would you see the coal industry & environmentalists pushing for solar? It's a giant rip off like most things "MARKETED" as green. We have the tech to make damn near any process we need to recycle. The issues is power, we need an all nuclear base load to free mankind.
@@nolanyoung8786 Environmentalists should lead by example instead of impeding progress and what currently helps the Greater Good. That same guy said we need to reduce the human population. But I bet he also protests mass-shootings too
If we don’t grow it it has to be mined or synthesized from things grown or mined those are the only options
Habibi then we don't need it in the first place.
We should relied on public infrastructure that will reduce our carbon emissions significantly as we will not be using car
"You live in a tent" - where did your food come from sir? Did you not drive or be driven to your remote tent? We need energy storage although it could be hyrdrogen or Carbon Capture they will have some environmental costs as well.
looks at the gas stoves...
Every form of human growth and energy production will have an environmental impact. It's up to society in large to decide what cards to play and what's worth saving. Personally I'd much rather see a small number of species be displaced rather than entire climates and face uncontrollable global mass extinction at a rate unknown to the Earth's history and that may possibly be irreversible.
He drove 500 miles from Portland in a jeep Cherokee. He's a hypocrite
This is a stupid argument, the world necessitates using these things. In order to push for reform, you still have to use a vehicle. Seems pretty easy to understand in a world where wars are often fought in the name of peace.
"A small price to pay for salvation"
Yeah look at the impact of an oil rig vs a lithium mine
looking at solely the visual impact is the dumbest thing you could potential ever do.
An oil rig is emptying a larger volume of soil of its oil, than even a mine would.
A lot of people dont realize the long time after effects of mining... in the public eye a state like Montana is pure, and pristine when in reality mining has left much of the water poisoned, and land destroyed
Idk why we don't also think about building society in a more sustainable way. If we lived in denser cities and had better transit, we wouldn't need to have personal vehicles for everyone. Like y'all people lived in cities and traveled the world without cars much longer than we've had them. Our "unchangeable" society is less than 100 years old
You can live in polluted, overpopulated, diseased concrete blocks if you like. I for one prefer living in natural open spaces with the rest of the animals.
You can live in polluted, overpopulated, diseased concrete blocks if you like. Just be prepared for a weaker immunity to basically everything. I for one prefer living in open natural spaces like the rest of the animals.
Ev vehicles and lithium mining will be the end of our beautiful world.
Not just lithium, those batteries need Cobalt, Nickel and Manganese. All of these metals are causing severe ethical and environmental damage, people are just too blind to see it.
@@petrolhead0387 i agree. I believe its worse for the environment then Fossil fuels. Bc even then it still takes a diesel machine to mine it all
We absolutely need to phase out the private cars.
I guess you do not live in a rural area
This didn’t even touch how this is an Indigenous cultural heritage site!
that one who lives in a tent did mention that
I’m glad they’re putting the lithium-free residual back, at least it won’t be like the s**thole of oklahoma
Yo, good on you for speaking up. I hope to have a beer with ya in Oklahoma Lithium free brother
3:20. Please DON'T say BOOTY if you aren't rapping or you don't say YEAARRRHHH
I've gotta agree with the mining guy - there are ways to reduce the impact of their mining operation, and there are steps (even some which haven't been discussed yet) which can be taken to revive the natural environment after their mining operations have been completed.
But yeah, ultimately we do need to reduce our need for cars.
I think the people opposing the mining operation are overestimating the long term impact of this mining operation (but I admit I could be wrong). At the very least, it's a good thing they're not mining in the middle of a rainforest!
The issue is that lithium ion batteries are not able to be made for longevity so after a while they won't charge up properly and eventually we'll have to make new batteries and mine for more lithium
@@joshuasweeney1159 The lithium in the batteries is recyclable. Batteries in general are highly recyclable. if you look at traditional car batteries 98% of the mass of a lead acid battery is recycled. The lithium isn't used up in a bad battery. The reason we need more mining is because we need a lot of batteries to electrify our entire economy and stop relying on fossil fuels. Cars are just part of the equation but grid scale batteries to store solar and redistribute it at night is something we need batteries for.
We need organic transportation. That does not hurt the environment.
They all gangster talking Lowering human population till they hear a knock on the door.
Lmfao these people always talk about lowering human population, untill we get covid. Then its "is the economy worth human lives???"
Then we get environmentalists acting like "just mine the lithium without child slaves and without hurting the environment!!!"
White girls got the logical reasoning of a toddler.
Electric cars aren't the issue, infact it's a good idea. The problem is using dangerous rare-earth minerals like lithium to make the needed batteries and generating the power for these cars using coal. We can't solve the puzzle with just 1 piece.
Would you show what is left after a lithium mine goes away. The polution
Dan, you should look what is left when coltan is mined in the east of the congo its a snapshot of things to come . in a way i am glad its being done here in america that way people can see this for themselves.
@@PHlophe I know when a gold or silver go under bankruptcy , they don,t do anything. Nor do they do anything in third world countries. Just leave waste..anything produced create waste. Always. But where do we draw the line?
There are Lithium asteroids, and you can launch them at the Earth for mining responsibly.
lmao ...!!
if Elon would stop trying to reach Mars and focus on that, perhaps
Ah yes let’s just launch asteroids weighing more than entire mountain ranges at earth using technology that doesn’t exist and with no regard for what happens if we miss or for the sheer amount of material that will be brought into orbit because of that
Why not mine them in space and bring back only what we need?
land right on me
The animals and species they wanna save from the mining are already under threat but since it's not as visible as a mine they are oblivious to the ongoing destruction. Hell why should they care about reefs and fishes as long as crude oil is pumped up and they can drive around their beautiful valley.
Lithium is really only one of many other options in the battery composition dept. VICE should do a report on those too to encourage progress.
No its not, at this moment there is not a single working battery with enough energy density to even come remotely close off being viable for use in electric cars. Other options are being heavily researched for decades and none of those are remotely promising. They all have there problems, they either only works for a couple of charges, are practically impossible to produce, catch fire easily, etc.....
BTW im not pro lithium battery electric cars either im more in the camp of nuclear energy / fuelcell cars. But at this point if you want a high capacity/ low weight / high current drawn battery u will need lithium
@@mvn4844 Then you are going to be impressed at the solid state approach that toyota is putting their main focus on lately. Fuel cells are interesting, and viable uses for thorium or heavier metals encapsulated for safety reasons that can't end up causing very bad accidents or dangerous side effects.
You can really park alot of electrons across ultra thin surfaces and lightweight and affordable without running out of materials even.
@@truetech4158 Just because a corp is "focusing" on R&D doesn't change the physics & chemistry of battery efficiency. History is filled with people who claim big things, look are Ponds & Fleishman and their "Cold Fusion" project.
@@truetech4158 Have any off those "battery options'' been shown to work and produced outside of lab conditions? If not i wouldnt get my hopes up just yet, at best they will be 10+ years away from now. And that is only if they dont fall into the unusable category like all other battery revelations from the last 30 years
@@terrydavis8451 Well, i did make mention of the use of super thin surfaces that can be flooded with electrons, we're talking gas disposition thin coatings, nano thin and scalar, feasible and proven already and now being scaled up for production, and that is nothing like the example from history involving cold fusion really, lol.
The dude camped out is definitely detached from reality in some ways but he also has a really good point about how we never talk about reducing consumption and population. The earth is over capacity and we’re spreading our western civilization ideologies (with rampant consumerism) around the world.
In reality current civilization is more detached from reality than someone living in a tent. Urbanization never considers the central bank of ecology that funds everything we do with resources.
What is the difference between burning fuel in your car and burning coal and oil in the electrical power station to charge your lithium batteries. "Clean cars" are not clean, when 90% of energy is made like this.
Still the cleanest solution.
I think the search for what's best for transportation and the environment is going to take many years to figure out... That being said, your options right now are: mine for oil or mine for lithium. Choose the lesser of 2 evils so whichever one has the least carbon footprint wins even though both options suck.
There’s always going to be an environmental concern, and its good to think about the externalities more thoroughly, but that should not be the reason to stop exploiting the natural environment for technological advancement and productivity growth, it just mean that the society as a whole need to weigh it carefully and make those exploitation in a more responsible and far sighted way, better understanding all its potential consequences. After all, productivity is what drive us forward, without modern industries, science as we know it, including biology would not exist, and we won’t even have those insight on ecosystems and species that we have today.
Exactly. Trial and error. Just not with Nuclear 📐
Nope. You being able to text in ur 4k Supersmart ass phone and drive a electric car to eat some stupid vegan meat is NOT the right way to move forward. I find it said that you are literally finding ways to justify explioting land and Earth. We literally have to make infrastructure for clean energy for these vehicles we don't have. Sorry the future isn't like a lot of movies make it seem like
What is productivity if it's harmful to people and perpetuates inequality? That kind of "productivity" is unethical and oppressive. Our sustainable future is not truly benefitting humanity if it's not inclusive and equitable.
I don’t believe we always need to progress forward. What more do you hope to achieve through mining and destroying the natural places around us, for “progress”?
That desert hippie's endorsement of soft eugenics was WILD.
Aaannnd toxicity goes from A to B but doesn't disappear at all. Ultimately the less humans on earth the better. Our consumption is the problem. The environmental activist guy has solid points.
6:00 well there's a very good reason for that.
That basically saying and admitting that human lives doesn't matter in a grand scheme of things. That's a huge red flag for humanity as a whole. Ironically that's the harsh truth that a lot of people never want to realize
My guess is that he doesn’t mean mass genocide. Stopping overpopulation can be as simple as providing contraceptives and raising standard of living.
This is a bad take, and makes poor assumptions (understandably based off of poor editing/journalism with respect to that line). Overpopulation is a real problem. There are still plenty of families all around the world with 5+ children, and in reality that's not needed and will harm us in the long run. While every human life is potentially important, that doesn't mean we need to saturate every part of the world with humans because that would mean certain death either by exhaustion of resources, crime, etc. We need to focus on the people that are already here, not the 6th child of each mother potentially changing the world one day. We are already on a crash course for overpopulation. And if we get to that point, it will be hard to come back from. We very much need to control the amount of people coming into the world through contraceptives or even legislation if necessary. I agree this may be a hot take for me, but it wont be such a hot take when overcrowding starts to affect each person personally in a matter of years. We have already seen the population exponentially rising and with that comes environmental and economic issues that will follow its trajectory.
if America doesn't does it then china and other countries who are not so environmental friendly. its bound to happen anyway.
@@RanchDressingPop-Tarts well activists are. there arent many in other countries then europe and us. self righteous people.
The fact is we will need to sacrifice some environments, It is my humble opinion that we should prioritize keeping rarer, more irreplaceable environments safe first. the boreal forest in Canada and Asia for example is vast and lacks biodiversity. infact the boreal forest shouldn't even exist as they are the remnants of a destroyed ecosystem, an area that less than 10,000 years ago was a massive savanna-like steppe, however the hunting of mammoths caused the steppe to turn into unproductive boreal forest. the fact that boreal forest does almost nothing for our biosphere means that we should take advantage of it rather than the rainforests that are half a billion years old. infact evidence suggests one of the only ways to reverse climate change would be to destroy the boreal forest and allow it to become a steppe with massive numbers of grazing herbivores and maybe one day we could bring back mammoths to keep it sustainable.
Of course i would hope that people would do research before accepting my ideas, but the fact is that humans have caused a mass extinction twice within the last 10,000-20,000 years, once when we cause all the megafauna to die off and now when we are targeting the ancient ecosystems near the equator. over 90 species of frog have went extinct in the last 50 years and that is what we have confirmed, hundreds of species we haven't discovered have been wipe off this planet.
People here are talking about nuclear power being the best option, yes but not the nuclear power stations as we know it. Smaller versions spread over a large distance is much safer than multiple large ones in terms of potential failure.
Nuclear is already incredibly safe as it is. Even factoring in high profile incidents like Chernobyl it kills less people per year/decade than gas or coal.
Small personal reactors aren't going to be a thing for a long time. No sense in ignoring the technology until then when it's already safer than the alternatives.
@@JM-mr6lv Coal doesnt kill people instantly, it reduces peoples life expectancy, say from 85 to 82, which is an excellent thing, nuclear kills everyone, young old if there is a disaster, a 20 year old losing life is far more tragic than a 82 year old who dies 3 years earlier due to air pollution, false equivalence
@@jake42731 More die from coal mining accidents every year than have ever died directly from nuclear accidents from nuclear reactors in the technology's entire history. Even comparing direct, immediate deaths for both sources Nuclear is by far still the safest option.
@@JM-mr6lv And coal has provided more energy in one year than nuclear has in the past 10 years, im not denying nuclear is safer than coal, im saying simply comparing deaths doesnt do numbers justics, say 10,000 people die from suicides and 20,000 people die from cancer, idiots will think cancer is a bigger issue since more people die, but no cancer deaths almost exclusively affects elderly while suicides can affect any age group, so in terms of good years lost, one suicide is many times more valuable,
As a biology student, I can definitely see both perspectives on this. I’m not claiming to be an expert but I think it would be best for the lithium to be mined in the US. If we don’t do it, some other country with no environmental regulations will. As long as the land is repaired during and after it’s done being mined, then I think the benefit is worth it. It is a difficult reality nonetheless that mining more is sadly part of going “green” in the long run.
Just Doin Florida those other countries are going to do it anyway. The only thing this changes is to the price of Lithium. It makes batteries cheaper for us in the US. Whether we mine it here or not is going to have little impact on mining around the world for the stuff, since we are not the only ones to use it and demand for lithium is only going to keep growing.
In Portugal, our gvmt is selling out parts of our natural parks to multimillionaire international companies. We've been fighting them off with protests with only a couple of thousands of people, but eventually their dishonest tactics will run over us and our small country will impacted by this faster that you can say "Tesla".
Think these money-oriented companies are worried about Portugal's nature when we're ourselves plagued by decades of incompetent environmental management?
If the mine is carefully made and carefully restored yes I agree with you. But like one guy said in the video we now have thousands of abandoned mines in the US that are currently being restored because of carelessness of the companies in the past. We can’t just have faith that the companies will do more than the bare minimum to ensure the environment is safe. We should push the companies to have strict plans for restoration and see to it that they stay true to their word
@@MrMrannoying Companys will do less then the bare minimum, anything they can get away with to increase profits. Only way to stop it is massive fines for non compliance
False dilemma. It's going to be mined elsewhere whether Americans do it too or not. Next argument.
Okay but what happens when the batteries become old or useless ? Can we recycle those batteries
spectrum.ieee.org/energy/batteries-storage/lithiumion-battery-recycling-finally-takes-off-in-north-america-and-europe
It is possible to recycle, but the investments need to be high because there's not a lot of recycling plants in North America and we could honestly use a lot more of them due to our high use of lithium.
Yes they are building one near Tesla in Sparks/Reno NV area
@@bitchfromhome no I don't think you can recycle them lithium batteries
Redwood materials, Li-Cycle, American battery technology company just to name a few are doing this. Both chemical and pyro process are being used.
How about we start with mandatory bike lanes on existing roads before we start destroying more land to build more stuff.
This is why we need sodium ion battery.
It's plenty in seawater
It already exists, it's just somewhat crappier than lithium ion. In particular, it's much heavier (for the same amount of watt hrs stored). That's really bad for cars, but might be less of an issue for short term storage (eg hoard excess from solar panels during day, then discharge during night).
@@pierrecurie this is what MIT wants to do with their ambient temperature sodium sulfur batteries. It's a cheaper alternative to lithium ion batteries where mobility isn't a concern.
But the fishes. We can’t. Think of the fishes.
It'll be 2 years before you guy start crying over the fish for some reason or other... and start typing two line comments on youtube for what the energy sector of the world should or should not be doing
@@outdoorstylelife Wont be 2 years, itll be when the national news outlets start following the fish activists around
All you people are nuts. E cars are a huge scam
Completely disagree with the conspiracy speculation or desire for depopulation but 100% agree that driving electronic cars will not impact climate change to the degree we need it to
Yeah:/
Electric & hybrid is worse. Petroleum wells have already been dug for gasoline & diesel. Oh wait diesel tractors are used for the digging of lithium & diesel trucks are used to transport lithium to factories that are generally powered by coal & fossil fuels to produce lithium. Why not just keep using fossil fuels. I enjoy my diesel pickup trucks.
you dug up a beautiful land and destroy its animal habitat to extract lithium... then you charge those batteries with electricity comes from burning fossil fuels or etc... so detrimental effect is bidirectional....
High iq take from this is that we should seriously look into asteroid mining. Asteroids can have massive accumulations of valuable metals and we wont have to deal with destroying our planet in the process.
Indeed, I've been looking into future investment opportunities regarding this whether it be R&D, speculation, or extraction. Companies get bought and merged so quickly though, and it's murky in these early days. Do you happen to have any information on the topic? It's appreciated.
@@BaltimoresBerzerker I’m not educated in the natural sciences but Wikipedia has a solid article on asteroid mining. Hope that helps !
And how do you get it to Earth? That would take enormous resources, huge amounts of rockets to bring back a meaningful amount. Look at what it took to get a tiny sample of an asteroid on the way back to Earth. Not a viable option anytime soon.
^This. So much this.
@@sadpepe7937 No it's not an immediate solution to anything, even something shallow like making money. But our grandchildren will certainly be very much aware of it's immediate potential, and those who wisely got involved in key aspects of the industry will be the next Gates, Rothschild, etc. (Financially speaking).
((...we do know what makes life worth living. The people ...loved and they were loved. They were mothers and fathers; they were husbands and wives; sisters and brothers; sons and daughters; friends and neighbors. They had hopes for the future and they had dreams that were not yet fulfilled.
And if there’s anything to take away from this …it’s the reminder life is very fragile. Our time here is limited and it is precious. And what matters at the end of the day is not the small things, it’s not the trivial things, which so often consume us and our daily lives. Ultimately, it’s how we choose to treat one another and how we love one another.
It’s what we do on a daily basis to give our lives meaning and to give our lives purpose. That’s what matters. At the end of the day, what we’ll remember will be those we loved and what we did for others. That’s why we’re here.)) - President Obama 🔥 🔥
There’s so many other promising battery technologies with greater potential than lithium. Aluminum ion being in the headlines most recently. You’d think the obvious solution would be to throw a massive amount of cash to develop them
you can't make science work just by throwing cash at it. trust me, if something had signs of working, all the investors would be pouring money into it in order to profit from it
@@therealestg9 We went to the moon in less than a decade. Granted the Nazis gave us a head start. A green new deal can transform the entire renewable industry if it was funded properly.
@@yoked1234 Going to the moon was not solved by throwing cash at a situation. Research took time, and it culminated in that. I agree we should be funding green technology, but you can't just throw money at stuff and then base your calculations off of that. The IPCC does not factor in prospective technology in their reports or planning. We have to go off of what we have, if a breakthrough happens, then well that's great.
@@arjund.4817 R&D is hard and not practical for private Capitol when shareholders demand to see profits now. When you look at breakthrough tech it usually comes from public institutions with public funding. If we funded R&D with massive spending there would be results.
Probably, but you would still have the same situation: people wanting to dig bauxite mines while others claimed lithium was the better alternative
so they are swapping one environmental issue for another?
Lmao I love the nut job who is planning to "hold back" the construction equipment.
A couple of points. First, there are lithium deposits elsewhere in North America, such as in Appalachia, where mining has a much more powerful cultural sway. I'm sure those areas would be happy to have that economic activity. Second, other, newer battery chemistries, such as aluminum ion, are in development, which will change the situation entirely if they become available. Aluminum ion batteries in particular show promise in a number of areas, both in terms of raw materials, because we already have gigatons of aluminum in the market, and because bauxite mines are well developed. Aluminum recycling is also well understood. Because there is so much aluminum in the market, it is dirt cheap compared to lithium. If you want to make something dirt cheap then make it out of dirt.
Sorry I don't think the old lady with the dogs in the SUV or those Bros at the campsite are going to change anything
They'd probably be happy if everyone moved to live in a cave.
@@PW218 I mean, they are welcome to do that LOL
They're crazy people
I think the population question is something that deserves discussion now, and not in 20 years when we feel that should've had the conversation 50 years ago.
The population question has sort of already been solved in the developed world. When people get a decent living they usually stop having 10 kids, more like 1-2 or even none.
@@lulu-gt6kl consider what percentage of the population represents "the developed world", and you may notice that no, not really, almost noone is talking about taking steps for population reduction. Not even in the developed world.
Lithium is used for so many more things than just electric vehicles. I wonder if the narrative to the environmentalists in this story would have changed if they were forced to consider what other uses lithium has than just cars
"electric vehicles pay off in the long term" 8 years left
Once it's american they're all of a sudden in doubt, if it's chinese it's fine
Makes sense
Yup. We can harvest it from Africa and destroy that environment, but here in the US with proper regulations? NO WAY!
@@chaosXP3RT haha....right....these people are completely fine when it comes to save a desert, which has one of the lowest biodiversities........but meanwhile millions of hectares of amazonian and borneo's tropical rainforests are cut to produce palm oil and ethanol.....which is saving the environment.. according to them..
4:50 This guys sums it all up quite well.
This was an interesting video. I think you got a fairly wide view of the situation but I would also take a look at the situation of the river downstream of there and general water requirements and waste disposal techniques. The devil is in the details. Also if you are mining there already, is there other metals that can be found along side the lithium? Can the mine do double duty somehow?
Being someone who's lived on and off in Nevada my whole life, it makes me sad how much of the land has been stripped. The wild mustangs that are left are all starving,I haven't seen a Mojave tortoise since I was a kid, and the area from the great basin to Vegas is quickly running out of water.
Too many spoiled people crammed into an area that was already weak. The collapse of the southwest is basically inevitable. It's merely a matter of time. With the changing climate and human impact. Not to mention the Midwest is bound to collapse with rainforest as the north American desserts will expand. An as of the east coast, I can't say, but people must either choose saving the climate and leaving the planet in effort to preserve it or our children's children will not have a planet to call home.
Supercapacitors are cheaper, more environmentally friendly, and can hold more charge
I'm 100% sure there are ways of transportation that don't involve anything except physics and chemistry. But this is lithium thing is 50% out of 100%