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Whatever keeps them from mining Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia, one of nature's magic places. Wikipedia says it contains 50-70% of world reserves, and I can't imagin
by saiya-jin 6y ago
Whatever keeps them from mining Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia, one of nature's magic places. Wikipedia says it contains 50-70% of world reserves, and I can't imagine mining wouldn't destroy it completely over time.
I truly wish Bolivia to raise itself from poverty, but ideally without the destruction of its magical wonders. Damn I miss traveling...
- bobthepanda 6y agoDidn't some country offer to not mine their beautiful area if they were paid by Western countries an equivalent amount, but no one was willing to put their money where their mouth was?
- ianai 6y agoGoing there, I wonder whether there’s any nearby to earth rocks with large amounts of lithium. That could be a potential big thing for space industry.
- CyberDildonics 6y agoI am going to guess that using 100 year old salt mining methods are cheaper than trying to mine asteroids. Also if asteroid mining were possible, I think gold is going to be first.
- cheschire 6y agoIsn't that the actual definition of extortion? That sounds like threatening something of value to the whole world for personal gain. edit: clarity.
- john_minsk 6y agoNope. This is capitalism. If you want something to happen - pay for it...
- toiletfuneral 6y agohell yeah lets destroy natural beauty permanently for the immediate gain of a few people, capitalism rules and there are no other options
- CyberDildonics 6y agoI don't know if demanding money to not tear up your own property is really at the heart of capitalism.
- smt1 6y agoIt might be capitalism, or it might be ignorance. Josesph Fourier discovered the heat transference problem, also known as the green house gas effect in modern times. Also related to the codon problem (the DNA and RNA protein or chicken or egg problem). Energy, power, and information, metabolism all fundamentally "do work" differently depending on context. Man has good enough physics developed to solve for huge classes of solutions of earth models, but all of the shared spaces, including all natural resources, must be viewed intrinsically as a global problem. We've never been good at what we can't physical intuit or sharing resources (or intuiting over non-trivial side efects). Luckily, since it seems to more an asymptotic issue (in control theory parlance) now, so various policy forcings and incentivization changes will be tried till the glitch is fixed.
- scythe 6y agoNo, extortion is when you threaten to hurt someone else for money. Threatening to hurt yourself for money is called, I think, livestreaming.
- cheschire 6y agoFunny comment, but the first part is what I'm driving at. Does damaging a world heritage site constitute hurting someone else or does it constitute only self harm because it's within sovereign borders?
- WJW 6y agoElements of both: by their nature world heritage sites are deemed of value to everyone and demolishing it would (mildly) hurt everyone. On the other hand: on the international level there is a treaty that legally protects world heritage sites but it carries no penalties if a state neglects to do so and UNESCO does not have any means to force a sovereign state to perform or cease any action. So unless you can somehow move the worlds' nations to enact sanctions or invade, each state is free to mine what they want.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- renewiltord 6y agoWell, I don't know. When Europe razes her cities and returns her farms to the Earth, then maybe she may judge. Until then, if Brazil asks, you pay. Or don't. It's just business.
- erklik 6y agoI want to mine something. You don't want to mine it. Therefore, pay me and I won't. Sounds like business deal to me. If I am going to not earn money from a resource that is mine because of you, then you need to pay me back for that amount of money I was going to earn.
- kazagistar 6y agoAll the first world countries already despoiled and continue to despoil the resources of the world at an alarming rate. They owe a debt, and this is asking them to pay that debt to those who haven't done so.
- markdown 6y agoI don't know about that, but Norway is paying to save rainforests: $1.2B to Brazil: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climatechange-amazon-norway-idUSKCN0RF1P520150915 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climatechange-amazon-norw... $150M to Gabon: https://qz.com/africa/1714104/gabon-to-get-150-million-from-norway-to-protect-its-forests/ https://qz.com/africa/1714104/gabon-to-get-150-million-from-... Indonesia: https://news.mongabay.com/2020/05/indonesia-norway-redd-payment-deforestation-carbon-emission-climate-change/ https://news.mongabay.com/2020/05/indonesia-norway-redd-paym... Guyana: https://news.mongabay.com/2009/02/norway-to-pay-guyana-to-save-its-rainforests/ https://news.mongabay.com/2009/02/norway-to-pay-guyana-to-sa...
- trianglem 6y ago>50-70% That’s incredible. I presume this is because no one has been looking for large reserves of lithium until recently.
- samatman 6y agoEasy lithium is in salars aka salt flats. They serve like a natural chromatography column, and some of the strata contain double-digit amounts of the ion (by molar mass, not weight, lithium is quite light). There's no salar like Salar de Uyuni, so no, it isn't a simple matter of looking harder. There's plenty of lithium-bearing rock, for some value of 'plenty', but this is both expensive, and entails grinding and leaching ore, which is enormously more environmentally destructive and energy intensive.
- HPsquared 6y agoI don't think it would be possible to destroy a 10,000 sq km salt flat if that was even the intention.
- RC_ITR 6y agoNever underestimate the ability of unchecked human industriousness to turn an unimaginably large resource into a rapidly dwindling one.
- hu3 6y agoA total of 11,088 sq km (4,281 sq miles) of rainforest were destroyed from August 2019 to July 2020 in Brazil. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-55130304 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-55130304
- samatman 6y agoI wouldn't say impossible. I would go so far as to say that pumping up lithium enriched brine from underneath it is unlikely to despoil the natural beauty of the entire salt flat. One corner of it, perhaps. Once that resource is exhausted, the choice could be made to strip-mine the surface. But that would be a choice, the slippery slope argument strikes me as tenuous here.
- carapace 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_sea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_sea > The Aral Sea ... was an endorheic lake lying between Kazakhstan (Aktobe and Kyzylorda Regions in the north) and Uzbekistan (Karakalpakstan autonomous region in the south) which began shrinking in the 1960s and had largely dried up by the 2010s. > Formerly the fourth largest lake in the world with an area of 68,000 km2 (26,300 sq mi), the Aral Sea has been shrinking since the 1960s after the rivers that fed it were diverted by Soviet irrigation projects. By 1997, it had declined to 10% of its original size... > By 2009, the southeastern lake had disappeared and the southwestern lake had retreated to a thin strip at the western edge of the former southern sea.
- naringas 6y agoI am pretty sure that evo morales was quickly kicked out of there because he wasn't gonna easily let global corporations mine in a "cost efficient" way. so now that he's out is only a matter of time before there's cheaper lithium in the global market.
- simlevesque 6y agoElon Musk said that he'd coup whoever he wants in order to get lithium... there is a lot at stake.
- thebradbain 6y agoIf it sounds like hyperbole, it’s not — Elon did verbatim tweet (and then delete) this: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.truthorfiction.com/did-elon-musk-tweet-we-will-coup-whoever-we-want-deal-with-it/%3famp https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.truthorfiction.com/did-elon... Maybe it was an attempt at a joke, but considering he’s one of the richest men in the world who has a vested interest in lithium, and considering there was a Bolivian, quasi-US-backed coup just this past year for reasons which at least partially include these lithium deposits, it’s not at all funny to joke about.
- kazagistar 6y agoThe people forced another election, and elected his party MAS (movement towards socialism) more overwhelmingly then they elected Evo Morales in the election last year where he was couped. On the other hand, MAS intends to exploit its lithium. It just plans to do that in a way that grows a high tech domestic industry instead of just exporting raw product. They also plan to keep the profits local to fund social programs and such, which rubs the neoliberal free market imperialists like American foreign policy goons the wrong way.
- grecy 6y agoAgree 100%. I spent a week driving across the Salar and the surrounding desert in 2010 [1], it was one of the most wild and unforgettable experiences of my life. All around the world places have parallels or similarities. Patagonia reminds me of Alaska. The Sahara is a bit like the Simpson, white sand beaches in Northern Australia are similar to those in Thailand or the Bahamas. Not so with Bolvia. I've never seen anything on the planet remotely like the high Altiplano around the Salar and the entire South Western part of Bolivia. It's utterly breathtaking and unique. [1] http://theroadchoseme.com/the-uyuni-salt-flats-to-chile-1 http://theroadchoseme.com/the-uyuni-salt-flats-to-chile-1
- tspike 6y agoHow would you compare it with the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah?
- grecy 6y agoBonneville is nice, but it's just not remote or untouched. Obviously my opinion is subjective, but it's a bit like comparing the mountains and wilderness of central Alaska to that of California. They're not on the same scale.
- samatman 6y agoLithium extraction from salars is done by pumping up brine from below the surface, then evaporating in ponds and processing the concentrated salts. This would despoil the area around the pump, somewhat. But this would be less than 1% of the 10,000km of the salar. Factories aren't very attractive, but enormous dunes of lithium-depleted salt might even be pretty. A matter of taste, let's say, but again, the great majority of the landscape would be untouched. It would also create some subsidence, I imagine. But this wouldn't be visible. And this must be balanced against the great good to humanity which is realized by the enormous amount of lithium batteries which could be manufactured with this resource. I'd say this is worth persuading the Bolivian people to accept, and isn't worth overthrowing their government over. But I don't get to make these decisions, alas.
- Valgrim 6y agoThe lithium in Bolivia is not going to spoil or disappear if it's not extracted right now, and the demand for lithium is probably not going to drop anytime soon. I believe that in order to persuade those opposed to mining lithium in Bolivia, you'd have to address those issues (what they're actually opposed to): 1) Stealing land rights from indigenous people. 2) Lack of environmental regulations, oversight and rehabilitation. 3) Getting ripped off by big mining corporations from across the world with a strong tendency to corrupt politicians and local police. 4) Ensuring good working conditions and compensation for miners. But alas, for powerful people "persuasion" is often just a synonym for repression and violence.