Im a Canadian geologist so I obviously dont have any personal stake in this but I do want to share my thoughts.
I think anti-mining sentiment is understandable in most places but not always justifiable. Lithium mining is absolutely required to transition from fossil fuels. Unless the number of cars on the road is greatly reduced, replacing them with BEVs will require significant amounts of lithium or improvements to Na ion batteries. There is not enough lithium available to get by just on recycling.
The question then becomes: where should this lithium come from? If it is not mined in western countries like USA or Canada, it will be mined by China or developing countries. In this comparison, who has better environmental regulations? Which countries have more human rights abuse?
If we decide that we can mine these deposits in the west, there is still a question about where they are mined. Do we extract lithium from basinal brines? My understanding is that these are generally more environmentally risky than extraction from pegmatites (the deposit type in New England).
The final question becomes, which communities will have to accept this mining? In Canada, most of the time it is indigenous communities that suffer most of the negative impacts of mining. There are many benefits to the communities too (usually), but the indigenous communities do not have nearly as much political sway as say rich cottage owners might, so their preferences and desires often get steamrolled by government in the name of “progress”.
The unfortunate reality is that if we want to get rid of fossil fuels, we need to do a lot more mining and extraction or come up with some serious technological and societal innovation. In a globalized economy, saying that you dont want mining near your home means that you want some other people to deal with the potentially negative consequences of it. I am not saying that we need to allow all mining everywhere, but these are important ethical considerations that we have to make when talking about how we want society to progress.
Sorry for the rant.
This is a beautiful description of why the obvious move here is “fewer cars, way better public transit.”
Hard agree from me. Cars are such an inefficient use of resources its crazy. If I had it my way we would all get around by train, tram, or bike.
Sorry for the rant.
Nuanced point is not a rant!
Mining has always been allowed on national forest land, but it was heavily regulated and overseen. They recently changed the rules so that no permission is needed for mining operations on less than 5 acres. This will be an ecological disaster
Yep, they are going to strip mine the Appalachians. And the sad thing is that the people in the Appalachians are going to welcome this. Because it means jobs in their minds.
What exactly is 328 years of anything? Are they saying we consume X tons, and we have found 328×X tons? Or is there some sort of future consumption estimations or trend lines accounted for? Is this all functionally available, or can we only access 20 years worth of it economically and banking on future extraction improvements? With thay large of a supply I would expect economic viability of further extraction would diminish over time.
My interpretation of the image is, “we consume x per year, we estimate there is 328x in the Appalachian area.”
I have a running joke I tell my friends that one day, the rich will flatten mountains, so the only way to see their natural wonder will be in VR. That’s when they will become mainstream. Not because they offer some new technological advancement, but because they’ve managed to capture the spaces we use to get away.
They already take the tops off mountains in Appalachia because it’s more efficient to just straight up delete a mountain to get coal than to dig into it for it
this style of mining also requires fewer operators than a deep mine. it has had deeply devestating consequences to me and my neighbors
There’s a video clip of a song in French with a similar concept from 2003. A child is frolicking and playing in nature until we discover that it’s all synthetic, her time is up, and other children are lining up for their time in “nature” too. Mickey 3D - Respire on YouTube.
From a description of the song on Wikipedia:
The text of the song addresses a “kid” to alert him about the state of the world that adults will leave to him. The first part of the song deals with the story of humans’ arrival on Earth and their disturbance of the whole balance of nature. The second part imagines the future of people if they continue to do so (referring to the disappearance of natural resources, animals and even genetic modification because of pollution) and how the “kid” will try to explain to his grandchildren why he did nothing to prevent it. The third part speaks about the state of slavery, misery, and shame of the human species as well as the unpredictability of its future.
EDIT: The description is lacking. The lyrics are speaking for themselves and here’s a translation of a few key lines.
"Come and listen kid, I’ll tell you the story of mankind. At first, there was nothing. Nature was following its course. There was no roads. But man came and elements were mastered. There’s no coming back anytime soon. We even began to pollute deserts.
You must breathe. It has to be said.
In a short future we’ll have consumed nature. Your one eyed grand-children will ask why you have two. They’ll ask how you could let this happen. You’ll reply it’s not my fault, it’s the ancient’s fault, but there will no nobody left to defend you. You’ll tell them about when you could eat fruits laying in a field, how animals were roaming the forest, that every spring birds would come back.
You must breathe. It has to be said. You must breathe. Tomorrow it will get worse.
The worst part of this story is that we’re slaves, somehow murderers, incapable of looking at the trees without feeling guilty, half defeated and totally miserable. So there is it kid, the story of mankind. It’s not so nice and I don’t know the end. You weren’t born in a cabbage, but in a hole that we fill like a cesspit."
Well here in america we already have flattened mountains. And also maybe bombed our own citizens who felt some sorta way about it.
Wild, but this is already happening - Tuvalu is being “preserved” in vr as it’s going to be one of the first island nations wiped out by climate change.
Just like always USA fighting yesterday war. Lithium is already on the way out.
I would be extremely disappointed in the species if we’re still using lithium batteries in 328 years time. Not that I actually believe that estimate.
Aren’t Appalachians poisoned enough?
Does Trump own a golf course in the Appalachians?
Probably. Maybe more than one. It’s a massive mountain range stretching most of the East Coast, from Georgia to Maine.
Well, the Appalachia cryptids are going to be feasting it seems…
This was my first thought. Big Cryptid© is funding this to consume workers.
And China is moving from lithium to sodium
More options for batteries is always good. Doesn’t negate the demand for more storage in general.
It’s better than that even, switching to sodium for grid scale storage means more available lithium and cobalt for instances where battery size and weight actually matter. And could even lower prices on lithium
Most of those states are reliably blue, too, so for the current administration it’s an added bonus
Original information source, not the tweet: https://www.usgs.gov/news/national-news-release/lithium-eastern-states-could-replace-imports-a-century-or-more
And the Study: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11053-026-10652-9
There is a very important sentence all the way at the end:The USGS did not assess what amount would be economically recoverable.Edit: On a second reading, I think this sentence applies only to the southwest Arkansas brine deposits. Sorry.
What bullshit. The usa already has extensive lithium deposits. It’s not a question of supply, it has always been a question of how much it costs to mine it. Lengthy permitting processes, environmental concerns, high costs, and technological challenges.
https://elements.visualcapitalist.com/white-gold-mapping-u-s-lithium-mines/
dont forget about refining, the us has basically no refining capacity
Lengthy permitting processes, environmental concerns
Those two don’t matter to the current administration.
Substitute those by corrupt assigning of contracts and public funds and pipedream “AI will extract Lithium for us” snake oil salespeople.
Tell that to the states where the mines are located. Because they will laugh themself silly.
No one has ever cared about the mountain folks :(
Until they shart shooting. I don’t know a single person in Maine that wants Plumbago mined
LOL that’s ridiculous campism.
Both sides of your uniparty are paid and work for the same companies.You have to be seriously delusional to not see the difference between the president routinely ignoring laws and all the other ones that at least pretended to want to follow them
That’s besides the point.
The infantile “but they do it much harder” is the same as with the aiding of zio genociders.
It doesn’t matter that there is a difference, but that both sides have the same policy.
It only matters to the dogmatic campists.
But I don’t expect anything better from the idiot country.
It has never been different and they don’t learn.
As long as they fuck up their own shithole for once I’m OK with it.Yeah, people don’t like the nuance of “both parties are functionally the same in some contexts, and different in others.” Like sure, it’s definitely better to steer the country toward the lesser of two evils when it’s the 11th hour and all you can do is use your single vote to make a minor change in the presidential election, but when we’re here in the space between, we need to be working much harder to actually make some real change.
Get some people in at the local level who actually care about their own integrity and the environment, and nurture them through the decades in more local and state elections until they finally get to that presidential campaign level. Then we can make some real change with that vote. Until that happens, yeah, both sides are going to allow the environment to get worse, even if one does it more egregiously.
Or we can topple the regime right now, but that’s a lot of work and sacrifice that I’m losing faith in our ability to scrounge up at the moment.
Well I know it’ s not going to happen.
You at least know how it is but also acknowledge not many people want to do the effort.
So again, sorry for the very few exceptions but that country deserves what it gets
It’s also why the Department of Energy department EERE (Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy) was just renamed to CMEI (Critical Minerals and Energy Innovation)
At the same time the DoE lab NREL (National Renewable Energy Laboratory) was renamed to NLR (National Lab of the Rockies)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Energy_Efficiency_and_Renewable_Energy
National Lab of the Rockets…? An acronym that sounds like it was made by a grade schooler. Which checks out, if we’re being honest.
Edit: lol I misread it, but the actual name is still very dumb
Rockies. As in the Rocky Mountains.
Still stupid.
Surely it’s more economical to just recycle batteries
Ridiculous, we need to dig up Appalachia to make 500 billion cellphones
the war against the land must continue until all our stories of resistance are forgotten
Yes, but how will that completely fuck up the countryside? Destruction for quick profit is the key part!!!
Also you need a jobs program for people who insist on living in mountains, refuse to leave or consolidate, and get mad at the idea of government handouts.
I’m sympathetic to Appalachians, most of the women I’ve dated have been Appalachian actually. There’s a lot to love about their culture and history. But as a political block they can be really frustrating as the region is just really inefficient for anything but mining, tourism, and subsistence farming, and the mining is killing them and everyone else.
Require the ability that anything with a battery has the ability to have it removed for recycling. And force ban on single use batteries from vapes and like products that are frequently difficult in design to not be recycled.
We do an amazing job with lead acid batteries. You don’t even have to throw them in the ocean anymore because you get money back.
I think the batteries in everyone’s car are basically ore for the next generation.
I think this is where we’ll start to see some innovation, large pita batteries supplimenting the crumbling infrastructure that people trade out every few years.
With the deregulation of wireless Internet, wired Internet is basically a liability now. I know that where I’m located the electric grid hasn’t been updated in years, the pipes are rotting out around us as well.
Just make a vape deposit system. And resell the batteries back to the vape manufacturers. They are good for hundreds of charges.
Vapes shouldn’t be disposable in the first place.
Would probably also be expensive to validate that the used batteries are still safe.
They’d just crush them up for the precious metals.
I do think about disposable vapes with 20w USB c charging and three inch LCDs.
Like those components are so cheap or old that they’re basically free. People are just throwing these bells and whistles on like we use packaging cause why not
MFW I take a split-second to imagine anyone in this administration can competent their way out of a wet paper bag.
To action this, they’ll kick poor people out of a town, clearcut something’s only habitat, pollute the area, make a tentative agreement for billions that equal zero because of the tax breaks and other oversubsidized giveaways, and then close it all down after all that with a suspicious bankruptcy and government buyout.
