Material conflicts

[NNadir]

From a book review in the current issue, as of this writing, of Science:

Material conflicts

Subtitle:

A journalist probes tensions surrounding two minerals that are key to green technologies

By Suleem H. Ali, Science 25 Jan 2024 Vol 383, Issue 6681 p. 374

Personally, as I make clear all the time, I object to the continued and commonly - almost universally - used locution applied to so called "renewable energy" as "green technologies." Nothing as land and material intensive as solar and wind energy coupled (at least in the minds of apologists) with battery/hydrogen fantasies that would exacerbate the material cost were they significant on scale, but for now largely coupled on expensive and destructive fossil fuel redundancy, should be regarded as sustainable or "green."

That's just me, the unknown dissident.

Excerpts:

The mineral anatomy of technology has become a fascination for scholars and journalists alike in recent years. Popular writings on the topic have also gained traction because of a rise in “resource nationalism” surrounding mining practices for metals critical for both defense purposes and green technologies. Adding to this canon, journalist Ernest Scheyder’s The War Below presents a fine-grained account of the environmental and social conflicts that permeate the landscape where two key minerals for the green energy transition—copper and lithium—are found. [For those interested, journalist Henry Sanderson’s recent book Volt Rush includes two additional minerals—cobalt and nickel—in its coverage (1).]

Scheyder’s choice of copper and lithium for his deep-dive analysis is partially determined by the field ethnography that he aims to provide of his travels to mining projects within the United States. These materials are at the forefront of critical mineral conflicts in the US. Although he also includes coverage of international projects, such as the Uyuni lithium fields of Bolivia, Scheyder’s storyline most acutely reveals the fault lines and contradictions of American critical minerals policy.

The book begins in the 1980s, with the discovery of a distinctive plant species in the Nevada wilderness—Eriogonum tiehmii, commonly known as Tiehm’s buckwheat. He interviews the discoverer of the species, botanist Jerry Tiehm, for the prologue of the book to understand the salience of such emblems of biodiversity. Four decades later, the species’ habitat is the battleground for the development of one of the United States’ most lucrative lithium deposits, and Tiehm’s buckwheat has become a saber for environmentalists and Native Americans in the fight against mining development.

In many ways, the past 40 years have been the most consequential period in the development of complex mineral supply chains for the transition to green energy technologies. We have come to understand the urgency of climate change during this period and to appreciate the need to find new means of energizing human civilization. Yet, as biologist Barry Commoner warned in one of his “laws of ecology,” “there is no such thing as a free lunch” in the Universe (2). The War Below successfully depicts why this aphorism is so apt for thinking about mineral resources. Even with recycling and circular economies, we must have enough stocks of metals to recycle. With lithium, which is flammable, there is also the challenge of transporting concentrated used material over long distances...

As for so called "renewable energy" and climate change; the cults of overwhelming enthusiasm for it, the money, the material, the industrialized wildernesses on land and sea squandered on it have failed to address climate change. It is getting worse faster. We're going to see concentrations of the dangerous fossil fuel waste in the planetary atmosphere this spring that will exceed 426 ppm, perhaps 427 ppm a little over 10 years after we first saw reading above 400 ppm.

No one now living will ever see the dangerous fossil fuel waste CO₂ concentration fall below 400 ppm.

Have a nice weekend.