17 ms·

The rush to mine lithium could dry up the high Andes

122 points by thread_id 4y ago

thread_id 4y ago
Classic example of a hidden economic and social cost of a technology that is not born by the final end use of the products - in this case storage of electricity for many applications.
syassami 4y ago
I've been following this company as a potential replacement to the evaporative pond method: https://lilacsolutions.com/technology/ https://lilacsolutions.com/technology/
- DavidPiper 4y ago
  Disclaimer: I am significantly financially invested in Lilac's success. I really do think this kind of technology is the way forward for Lithium extraction. Total water return, no ponds, no evap, tiny footprint. Even if it's not Lilac, someone will solve this for the timescale we need to extract Lithium before recycling becomes common. Hard rock is a very different story to brine of course.
newsclues 4y ago
Are the Taliban sitting on boat leads of the stuff? Why didn’t the American build a railroad to the ocean!?
elihu 4y ago
> "But every ton of lithium carbonate extracted from underground using this cheap, low-tech method typically dissipates into the air about half a million gallons of water that is vital to the arid high Andes. The extraction lowers water tables, and because freshwater often sits on top of salty water, this has the potential to dry up the lakes, wetlands, springs, and rivers that flourish where the underground water reaches the surface." What's the cost of importing 500,000 gallons of water to replace what evaporates? If the miners had to pay that cost, would it still be economical for them to sell that ton of lithium carbonate? The first result in Google says lithium carbonate costs $17,000 per ton in 2021. It might be more now. This fluid-hauling train car has a capacity of around 30,000 gallons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOT-111_tank_car https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOT-111_tank_car So, about 16 train cars worth of water for $17,000 worth of lithium. Not sure if that's a good trade or not. It might depend on how far they have to go for the water. (Maybe sea water would be good enough, if the ground water they're removing is already brine, then maybe adding more salt isn't a problem.)
- WmyEE0UsWAwC2i 4y ago
  What about taking the ore to sea level and doing the process there. It's downhill. This is the greatest flaw in markets. It's said that markets compute the right values for trade goods. But it should be qualified to: Value now (or in the short term). In any specific moment value has certain dispersion due to multiple factors. The uncertainty of value in the future is huge because those factors compound. My point is that I believe markes only work in the short term. For long term planning (~one huamn lifetime, a civilization life time) markets don't work.
  - pirate787 4y ago
    Markets are shaped by the cultural, institutional, and legal frameworks. Markets reflect these values
  - legutierr 4y ago
    Markets are a function of the political regimes within which they operate. They depend on the existence of money, freedom of movement, reasonable taxation, and private property—and a certain level of protection from theft and violence—all of which are features a well-functioning state. Often markets also depend on standardization and regulation that can only be enforced by governments. If the markets that exist today fail to take into consideration the true societal costs of their operation—if there is no accounting for future costs—that is not a failure of markets in general, but of the current political regime.
    - WmyEE0UsWAwC2i 4y ago
      You make an interesting point but the same problem is now on the hands of the political regime(hopefully a wide segment of society) to decide the value of things.
  - CompelTechnic 4y ago
    The way the lithium brine is extracted from the ground is by pumping water down, allowing the lithium brine to dissolve in the water, and pumping it back to the surface.
yuan43 4y ago
> Lithium is the lightest of all metals. Soft and malleable with a high capacity to store energy, it is ideal material to make lightweight, rechargeable batteries. Demand for the metal for lithium-ion batteries to power mobile devices has risen strongly for three decades. But while mobile-phone batteries require just a tenth of an ounce of lithium carbonate, a typical electric-car battery requires 130 pounds — around 20,000 times as much. Without a radical breakthrough in batteries, electric cars are not the answer. They are every bit the problem that ICE cars are, it's just that the full environmental costs of the switchover have not been widely-recognized.
- msbarnett 4y ago
  > They are every bit the problem that ICE cars are, it's just that the full environmental costs of the switchover have not been widely-recognized. I think you’re confusing an environmental catastrophe with devastating consequences for specific people (and animals etc) in a contained location with a completely uncontained environmental catastrophe with devastating consequences for all life on this planet. Just reducing cars’ impact to “devastating a number of specific contained locales” would be a monumental step forward.
  - wyldberry 4y ago
    The funny thing about devastating a local population of flora/fauna is that it has wide ranging ripples that we are often unable to anticipate. Saving the world by consuming more (vehicles, electronics) etc is not going to work. Eventually we will fall inline with the Nash Equilibrium as well.
  - o_1 4y ago
    What if cutting the rainforest down and killing all the whales stopped climate change? It's "just localized" so it will benefit us all in the long run. Let's replace ICE engines with something responsible and feasible. Hydrogen fuel cells can't be ruled out, there is still ground to be gained.
    - wolfram74 4y ago
gr1zzlybe4r 4y ago
EVs are the biggest false solution out there. We are looking at decimating larger and larger portions of the planet just to preserve our stubborn dependence on automobiles. I like automobiles and don't want them banned, but the real problem that we have is that we're dependent on an unscalable transportation solution: cars.
- dieselgate 4y ago
  You said it very well. I’ve personally found biodiesel to be the best stopgap solution for relying on a car - ymmv
- gpm 4y ago
  Eh, we're always going to need a fair number of vehicles as a society in an industrial and commercial capacity. EVs are by far the best solution for those vehicles. I don't think it's fair to call them a false solution, they're just not a solution to all our problems, only some of them. They're also a huge financial enabler for us scaling our battery production, and the grid scale battery technology that is resulting is hugely useful in terms of transitioning away from fossil fuel electricity production.
  - socialismisok 4y ago
    They aren't a solution to transportation at large. They are a solution to some issues, of course.
  - sbaiddn 4y ago
    "EVs are by far the best solution for those vehicles." Thats not obvious to me. Why is that the case? What are the assumptions in your assertion? are you assuming continuous innovations in mtls science? Are you assuming a certain electrical grid and generstion mix that may or may not exist? For example, large ships certainly fall under "commercial" vehicles, but any electrical energy storage (even inexistent ones) would be hard pressed to compete on CO2 emissions with our current grid make up. 50% thermal efficiency is really good! Well the same can be said about tractor trailers. Their engines aren't 50% efficient, but they're pretty darned good! Id be surprised if an EV drivetrain can beat them on CO2 emissions. And if ships and trucks diesel engines are made to run NG (LNG tankers already do) Forget it. EV's are a CO2 environmental disaster by comparison. So, again, what are your assumptions?
ErikVandeWater 4y ago
Cars aren't the solution to the future of transportation. Walkable cities and quality public transit between them is.
- missedthecue 4y ago
  Great idea but not going to work. Even in Japan, ~70% of households own a car. They serve a vital component of transportation that is not easily substituted for.
  - socialismisok 4y ago
    Japan has a car to household ratio of 1.06, compared to America's 1.88 average per household. South Korea has even fewer. Let's set the first goal at one car per household, and supplement everything beyond that with transit and electric bikes.
    - sbaiddn 4y ago
      One car per family is doable, even in the US. We did it for a while and then got ourselves a Golf. Even after we moved to the suburbs, and the Golf was in the shop (deer) for a month (supply chain), it wasnt so bad. The secret? My other car is a 7 seater SUV with a 3.3L V6 that can tow 5000 lb. Its big enough that it can do anything I might need it to do. Getting the golf, ironically, lowered our fuel consumption because the golf can do 70% of what we'd use the SUV for. But, because of that remaining 30%, I'm keeping the SUV. So its not obvious that simply lowering average numbers of cars per household improves anything. Btw, replacing my Golf with an F150 hybrid would probably lower my fuel usage.
    - missedthecue 4y ago
      US is clearly the outlier in automobile dependency, no argument there.
    - TrapLord_Rhodo 4y ago
      What does car per household have to do with anything? I can have 12 cars and never drive, one car and be on the road 24/7.
mark336 4y ago
The governments of Chile and Bolivia afe now far-left. I wonder what their stance is on extractive industries?
- eunos 4y ago
  Chile govt is AOC lite
  - socialismisok 4y ago
    So... Kinda center left? AOC isn't really that left. She's left compared to the Democratic party, but I don't think she's that extreme.
- aeyes 4y ago
  In Chile the stance hasn't changed much with the new government, some tweaks are being made to take more profits through additional taxes/royalties but for now that's about it. In the last decade several laws have passed which require mining operations to use less water and use renewable energy for their operation. Touching mining would be suicide, it's 20% of the GDP. Chile is the most advanced country in South America because of mining, just like the oil countries. We better take that money while it lasts and invest it wisely. The proposed constitution could have been a big blow to the sector, for now it didn't get approved so we will have to see what happens in the future. This uncertainty isn't good for foreign investment, we can only hope that the government gets their act together. By the way, I would argue that copper mining is far more destructive than Lithium mining.
  - 29athrowaway 4y ago
    They new government is trying to reform the constitution. Everything else to them is secondary. With the new constitution they can effectively kill separation of powers, checks and balances, etc. and install a far-left dictatorship.
    - aeyes 4y ago
daniel-cussen 4y ago
Not really. There's a lot up there, the demand is just now scraping the top of the barrel, in Chile for one, there's many many salt flats and huge lithium deposits. Lithium deposits, despite intense interest in exploitation overseas, is met with the 1981 law prohibiting lithium mining because it's a nuclear munition. As though you can't get more than enough from batteries by this point, that's a law that is pure corruption, like totally. Yes lithium is part of the Hydrogen Bomb and increases the yield enormously, and yes it comes from the Altiplano (Chile Bolivia and Perú, and to a lesser extent Argentina) but that never stopped anybody from getting it. Metals are all present everywhere, the only question is that of concentration. For iron and copper and others, concentration determines economic returns almost single-handedly, and it's a huge problem for copper right now in Chile, Chuquicamata gets .73% concentration. So North Korea and Israel didn't seek good concentrations internationally, they didn't go to Olympic Dam in Australia for their uranium--this part I'm divining--rather they mined it at a lower concentration within the country. You don't want to ship this, and in fact there are Geiger counters and suchlike in docks, in New York for one, placed to stop nuclear munitions from being shipped. It's pretty easy to detect. In that case secrecy means local deposits are viable and international deposits are not. So at any rate there is some lithium available for countries locally, now there's lithium mining in Australia like rock mining, which is worse than salt flats by far. Very doubtful America could ever impede other nuclear powers from obtaining lithium in quantities for a bomb. Perhaps once, not now that lithium is in every device and that lithium can not only travel on planes--despite putting airplanes at risk--but it can reach every country. Every country has smartphones, every country has lithium. Every country can improve the yield of a hydrogen bomb. So really the minute smartphones became commonplace, Chile should have repealed the 1981 lithium law. It did not. It did not because of corruption, in fact Soquimich was investigated as a company listed in the NYSE for corruption, and frankly they were guilty as fuck. For ages they monopolized lithium, only now that there is rock mining and Bolivia and Perú are determined to produce it themselves, Chilean bribes be damned, is there real competition. And the market is rapidly expanding, the monopoly made sense when demand was small, like when lubricants and medication were important uses[1], but now that it's a huge percentage of every modern car's weight, what the hell! So Soquimich "asked" the Nuclear Commission of Chile (whatever it's called in English, there's no ambiguity there is one and that's it) if it could expand production dramatically. Well that's what they said. Soquimich owns not only that office thoroughly (very prolific campaign contributors with bribes underneath, as determined by I think DOJ, in a way that being brought to light won't change because there's pitiful campaign contributions otherwise, there is loyalty, they have power beyond just influence due to the owner being Pinochet's son-in-law), but many many others, but now there is that magical thing that capitalism brings, which makes it actually work, which is competition! Particularly from rock mining. Lithium has gone so far up that rock mining is no longer expensive in such a way that it can be ruined by a retaliatory and temporary increase in production by Soquimich, which was the game plan, basically Saudi Arabia of lithium. Saudi Arabia did do that. Although the also allowed all kinds of countries into OPEC, basically allowing a quota based on proven reserves and that was all there was to it. Not strictly, but pretty much. It used to be predatory pricing essentially. Well I by this point forgive them somewhat because they are producing much more, they are competing, they are no longer a tight monopoly doing pretty harmful things, they are in principle interested in ecology (it's in their best interest to be). And further there is one thing worse than a monopoly, which is nothingness. Not a single producer. That exists, the market for selling algorithms is that, no buyers and no sellers, so no market. Nothingness. One seller is much better than no seller, and lithium prices didn't hinder laptops and smartphones all that much, they did produce more many times, and they never owned a total monopoly, I think the majority or maybe 40%--very dominant--but not that much. And plus it used to be worth dick, nobody used lithium for anything, nothing, it was a terrible business to be in for decades, like lubricant and medication and nuclear ordnance, and none of them used lithium in real volume (the hydrogen bomb yes, I don't know I would say hundreds of kilograms per bomb since I can't realistically know exactly not declassified, not a whole lot of Museums of the History of Nuclear Weapons). So really it was a pretty tough racket for even a monopoly, they didn't make real money for many decades, they in practice needed to monopolize supply--no matter who extracted it in the Andes, they had to monopolize it, no choice. Or they would compete to terribly low prices, and one or both would have to drop out of the market. Reserves were a bit greater than now, market was tiny, totally marginal element with no applications. Even today it's all just the single application of batteries, little else. So ecology. Lithium buyers want ecology. Whether Soquimich likes it or not (and they're not pure evil they did some shit they got caught they're paying for it a bit, they lost their monopoly, now they compete), but part of the job is selling lithium and for that being ecological is mandatory. Wouldn't want to get a "conflict lithium" designation, that harms business. And it costs little, not a big polluter. I went to the biggest Chilean salt flat, I saw the lithium extraction like pumping down deep into the salt flat, but I saw all this in a tourist destination meant to look at the pink flamingos feeding on shrimp in the salt flat. That is pretty much all the life there is there, shrimp and flamingos. The flamingos were chilling, not afraid of the pump truck, and they were there to eat shrimp, so the shrimp clearly weren't being very prejudiced. That was it, there's no flora of any kind there, not right there nearby there's like dots in the ground some seasons, like nothing. There might be other birds sometimes. I would remember the tourist destination talking about other species, it was really just two...I suppose there was phytoplankton for the shrimp to eat. The tourist destination was really just about the flamingos, which are incredible, and they become pink from eating shrimp, but again if the lithium extraction fucked their life up they would not go within miles of a pump truck like that one. So ecological, and really, lithium extraction opens doors in every government office near a salt flat. Want to get permission to extract lithium, it's easy, "knock knock" "who's there" "lithium" "lithium who" "lithium who pays taxes" boom you're in. Municipal governments want money not to be such a problem, they want a budget, they want to get the wealth in their environment, and by this point it's basically a gold rush, even in Chile. And there is lots. That part of the Andes is the low-cost producer of lithium by a very wide margin, can't even mention a single salt flat worth anything outside that region. These days, lithium is green energy, it's the new oil. [1] Interesting fact, lithium commodity exports and bipolar medication are the same molecule: lithium carbonate. If you're bipolar in the traditional sense and run out of lithium carbonate pills while near lithium extraction, you can either end up streaking naked through the salt flat--which happens--or ask the extractor for a sample of their commodity, which being a sample will be pretty pure, and deal with bipolarity like that. It's the only example of a commodity that is at the same time medication that I know of. I joke about Chilean lithium, that before like 2020 you shouldn't touch lithium carbonate eve if you were diagnosed bipolar, it's even crazier. It did badly for a very long time, the monopoly and 1981 law were very strong.
thweoiru234 4y ago
- beebeepka 4y ago
aortega 4y ago
EVs are just marketing, they not much more efficient than gas cars, it just moves the energy source from fossil fuels to...well, nuclear at best, or centralized fossil fuel generators at worst. You are not fixing global warming with EV cars. A small, dirty, gas moped is way more efficient, cheaper and green than the greenest EV car. The real revolution is electric bicycles, unsurprisingly one of the most popular means of transportation in China. I saw an excellent graph that I can't find at the moment, which shows that a human on a bicycle is 10 times more efficient than the most efficient biological locomotion known (that of fish).
- afarrell 4y ago
  Large problems need to be solved in pieces if they are to be solved at all. Anything else is boiling the ocean.
- fsh 4y ago
  Small IEC mopeds are hideously inefficient. They consume merely 2 or 3 times less fuel than a modern IEC car, despite being an order of magnitude lighter and much slower. Also they emit way more pollutants and are extremely noisy.
jillesvangurp 4y ago
No need to worry, plenty of lithium exists elsewhere and is already being actively mined. Until a few years ago, lithium was a by product of other types of mining that would be discarded as it did not have a huge market. That obviously changed in the last decade or so and there are now lots of companies looking all over the world for lithium deposits. And they are finding them too. And some of those new deposits are being mined already. Lithium is a fairly common element. It's not a rare earth. Extracting it and processing it are energy and water intensive processes and mining of itself also has issues with pollution. So doing that in the Andes where water is scarce, is indeed problematic. This is also a reason that some areas are hesitant with giving permits for lithium mining. Nevertheless, there are new mines in Nevada, Texas, Canada, Cornwall, Australia, and other places that are starting to ramp up. The sentiment in this thread seems to be a bit weirdly anti car and even pro ICE cars. However, this is not the show stopper that some ICE car fanatics want you to believe it is. If only they applied the same outrage against burning oil, fracking, oil spills, damage done by oil refineries, oil drilling in senstive ecosystems, and all the rest. The damage lithium mining does pales in comparison to that. This is just a minor growing pains for an exponentially growing industry that is going from almost no volume ten years ago to shipping tens of millions of vehicles as well as grid storage, home storage, and other batteries. Anything with wheels is going to stop burning stuff and start using lithium. And close 100% of that lithium can be recycled when the battery eventually reaches its end of life. Lithium ion and other batteries are part of the solution to the problems caused by burning oil. The solution is not advertising we all turn ourselves into Luddites. Good luck advertising it; but I have no confidence that you'll move the needle in a way that matters. Batteries on the other hand are succeeding where generations of hippies have failed to even slow down the growth at which the problem was accelerating. ICE cars are now legacy vehicles and the transition to EVs is well under way. Thanks to lithium ion batteries.
- user3939382 4y ago
  IMHO we should never be having a conversation about gas vs electric vehicles without discussing the sources (and future thereof) of the power grid energy charging these cars. Otherwise we run the risk of, for example, EVs laundering the output of the coal industry.

122 points by thread_id 4y ago

Classic example of a hidden economic and social cost of a technology that is not born by the final end use of the products - in this case storage of electricity for many applications.

syassami 4y ago

I've been following this company as a potential replacement to the evaporative pond method: https://lilacsolutions.com/technology/ https://lilacsolutions.com/technology/

DavidPiper 4y ago
Disclaimer: I am significantly financially invested in Lilac's success. I really do think this kind of technology is the way forward for Lithium extraction. Total water return, no ponds, no evap, tiny footprint. Even if it's not Lilac, someone will solve this for the timescale we need to extract Lithium before recycling becomes common. Hard rock is a very different story to brine of course.

newsclues 4y ago

Are the Taliban sitting on boat leads of the stuff? Why didn’t the American build a railroad to the ocean!?

elihu 4y ago

> "But every ton of lithium carbonate extracted from underground using this cheap, low-tech method typically dissipates into the air about half a million gallons of water that is vital to the arid high Andes. The extraction lowers water tables, and because freshwater often sits on top of salty water, this has the potential to dry up the lakes, wetlands, springs, and rivers that flourish where the underground water reaches the surface." What's the cost of importing 500,000 gallons of water to replace what evaporates? If the miners had to pay that cost, would it still be economical for them to sell that ton of lithium carbonate? The first result in Google says lithium carbonate costs $17,000 per ton in 2021. It might be more now. This fluid-hauling train car has a capacity of around 30,000 gallons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOT-111_tank_car https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOT-111_tank_car So, about 16 train cars worth of water for $17,000 worth of lithium. Not sure if that's a good trade or not. It might depend on how far they have to go for the water. (Maybe sea water would be good enough, if the ground water they're removing is already brine, then maybe adding more salt isn't a problem.)

WmyEE0UsWAwC2i 4y ago
What about taking the ore to sea level and doing the process there. It's downhill. This is the greatest flaw in markets. It's said that markets compute the right values for trade goods. But it should be qualified to: Value now (or in the short term). In any specific moment value has certain dispersion due to multiple factors. The uncertainty of value in the future is huge because those factors compound. My point is that I believe markes only work in the short term. For long term planning (~one huamn lifetime, a civilization life time) markets don't work.
- pirate787 4y ago
  Markets are shaped by the cultural, institutional, and legal frameworks. Markets reflect these values
- legutierr 4y ago
  Markets are a function of the political regimes within which they operate. They depend on the existence of money, freedom of movement, reasonable taxation, and private property—and a certain level of protection from theft and violence—all of which are features a well-functioning state. Often markets also depend on standardization and regulation that can only be enforced by governments. If the markets that exist today fail to take into consideration the true societal costs of their operation—if there is no accounting for future costs—that is not a failure of markets in general, but of the current political regime.
  - WmyEE0UsWAwC2i 4y ago
    You make an interesting point but the same problem is now on the hands of the political regime(hopefully a wide segment of society) to decide the value of things.
- CompelTechnic 4y ago
  The way the lithium brine is extracted from the ground is by pumping water down, allowing the lithium brine to dissolve in the water, and pumping it back to the surface.

yuan43 4y ago

> Lithium is the lightest of all metals. Soft and malleable with a high capacity to store energy, it is ideal material to make lightweight, rechargeable batteries. Demand for the metal for lithium-ion batteries to power mobile devices has risen strongly for three decades. But while mobile-phone batteries require just a tenth of an ounce of lithium carbonate, a typical electric-car battery requires 130 pounds — around 20,000 times as much. Without a radical breakthrough in batteries, electric cars are not the answer. They are every bit the problem that ICE cars are, it's just that the full environmental costs of the switchover have not been widely-recognized.

msbarnett 4y ago
> They are every bit the problem that ICE cars are, it's just that the full environmental costs of the switchover have not been widely-recognized. I think you’re confusing an environmental catastrophe with devastating consequences for specific people (and animals etc) in a contained location with a completely uncontained environmental catastrophe with devastating consequences for all life on this planet. Just reducing cars’ impact to “devastating a number of specific contained locales” would be a monumental step forward.
- wyldberry 4y ago
  The funny thing about devastating a local population of flora/fauna is that it has wide ranging ripples that we are often unable to anticipate. Saving the world by consuming more (vehicles, electronics) etc is not going to work. Eventually we will fall inline with the Nash Equilibrium as well.
- o_1 4y ago
  What if cutting the rainforest down and killing all the whales stopped climate change? It's "just localized" so it will benefit us all in the long run. Let's replace ICE engines with something responsible and feasible. Hydrogen fuel cells can't be ruled out, there is still ground to be gained.
  - wolfram74 4y ago

gr1zzlybe4r 4y ago

EVs are the biggest false solution out there. We are looking at decimating larger and larger portions of the planet just to preserve our stubborn dependence on automobiles. I like automobiles and don't want them banned, but the real problem that we have is that we're dependent on an unscalable transportation solution: cars.

dieselgate 4y ago
You said it very well. I’ve personally found biodiesel to be the best stopgap solution for relying on a car - ymmv
gpm 4y ago
Eh, we're always going to need a fair number of vehicles as a society in an industrial and commercial capacity. EVs are by far the best solution for those vehicles. I don't think it's fair to call them a false solution, they're just not a solution to all our problems, only some of them. They're also a huge financial enabler for us scaling our battery production, and the grid scale battery technology that is resulting is hugely useful in terms of transitioning away from fossil fuel electricity production.
- socialismisok 4y ago
  They aren't a solution to transportation at large. They are a solution to some issues, of course.
- sbaiddn 4y ago
  "EVs are by far the best solution for those vehicles." Thats not obvious to me. Why is that the case? What are the assumptions in your assertion? are you assuming continuous innovations in mtls science? Are you assuming a certain electrical grid and generstion mix that may or may not exist? For example, large ships certainly fall under "commercial" vehicles, but any electrical energy storage (even inexistent ones) would be hard pressed to compete on CO2 emissions with our current grid make up. 50% thermal efficiency is really good! Well the same can be said about tractor trailers. Their engines aren't 50% efficient, but they're pretty darned good! Id be surprised if an EV drivetrain can beat them on CO2 emissions. And if ships and trucks diesel engines are made to run NG (LNG tankers already do) Forget it. EV's are a CO2 environmental disaster by comparison. So, again, what are your assumptions?

ErikVandeWater 4y ago

Cars aren't the solution to the future of transportation. Walkable cities and quality public transit between them is.

missedthecue 4y ago
Great idea but not going to work. Even in Japan, ~70% of households own a car. They serve a vital component of transportation that is not easily substituted for.
- socialismisok 4y ago
  Japan has a car to household ratio of 1.06, compared to America's 1.88 average per household. South Korea has even fewer. Let's set the first goal at one car per household, and supplement everything beyond that with transit and electric bikes.
  - sbaiddn 4y ago
    One car per family is doable, even in the US. We did it for a while and then got ourselves a Golf. Even after we moved to the suburbs, and the Golf was in the shop (deer) for a month (supply chain), it wasnt so bad. The secret? My other car is a 7 seater SUV with a 3.3L V6 that can tow 5000 lb. Its big enough that it can do anything I might need it to do. Getting the golf, ironically, lowered our fuel consumption because the golf can do 70% of what we'd use the SUV for. But, because of that remaining 30%, I'm keeping the SUV. So its not obvious that simply lowering average numbers of cars per household improves anything. Btw, replacing my Golf with an F150 hybrid would probably lower my fuel usage.
  - missedthecue 4y ago
    US is clearly the outlier in automobile dependency, no argument there.
  - TrapLord_Rhodo 4y ago
    What does car per household have to do with anything? I can have 12 cars and never drive, one car and be on the road 24/7.

mark336 4y ago

The governments of Chile and Bolivia afe now far-left. I wonder what their stance is on extractive industries?

eunos 4y ago
Chile govt is AOC lite
- socialismisok 4y ago
  So... Kinda center left? AOC isn't really that left. She's left compared to the Democratic party, but I don't think she's that extreme.
aeyes 4y ago
In Chile the stance hasn't changed much with the new government, some tweaks are being made to take more profits through additional taxes/royalties but for now that's about it. In the last decade several laws have passed which require mining operations to use less water and use renewable energy for their operation. Touching mining would be suicide, it's 20% of the GDP. Chile is the most advanced country in South America because of mining, just like the oil countries. We better take that money while it lasts and invest it wisely. The proposed constitution could have been a big blow to the sector, for now it didn't get approved so we will have to see what happens in the future. This uncertainty isn't good for foreign investment, we can only hope that the government gets their act together. By the way, I would argue that copper mining is far more destructive than Lithium mining.
- 29athrowaway 4y ago
  They new government is trying to reform the constitution. Everything else to them is secondary. With the new constitution they can effectively kill separation of powers, checks and balances, etc. and install a far-left dictatorship.
  - aeyes 4y ago

daniel-cussen 4y ago

Not really. There's a lot up there, the demand is just now scraping the top of the barrel, in Chile for one, there's many many salt flats and huge lithium deposits. Lithium deposits, despite intense interest in exploitation overseas, is met with the 1981 law prohibiting lithium mining because it's a nuclear munition. As though you can't get more than enough from batteries by this point, that's a law that is pure corruption, like totally. Yes lithium is part of the Hydrogen Bomb and increases the yield enormously, and yes it comes from the Altiplano (Chile Bolivia and Perú, and to a lesser extent Argentina) but that never stopped anybody from getting it. Metals are all present everywhere, the only question is that of concentration. For iron and copper and others, concentration determines economic returns almost single-handedly, and it's a huge problem for copper right now in Chile, Chuquicamata gets .73% concentration. So North Korea and Israel didn't seek good concentrations internationally, they didn't go to Olympic Dam in Australia for their uranium--this part I'm divining--rather they mined it at a lower concentration within the country. You don't want to ship this, and in fact there are Geiger counters and suchlike in docks, in New York for one, placed to stop nuclear munitions from being shipped. It's pretty easy to detect. In that case secrecy means local deposits are viable and international deposits are not. So at any rate there is some lithium available for countries locally, now there's lithium mining in Australia like rock mining, which is worse than salt flats by far. Very doubtful America could ever impede other nuclear powers from obtaining lithium in quantities for a bomb. Perhaps once, not now that lithium is in every device and that lithium can not only travel on planes--despite putting airplanes at risk--but it can reach every country. Every country has smartphones, every country has lithium. Every country can improve the yield of a hydrogen bomb. So really the minute smartphones became commonplace, Chile should have repealed the 1981 lithium law. It did not. It did not because of corruption, in fact Soquimich was investigated as a company listed in the NYSE for corruption, and frankly they were guilty as fuck. For ages they monopolized lithium, only now that there is rock mining and Bolivia and Perú are determined to produce it themselves, Chilean bribes be damned, is there real competition. And the market is rapidly expanding, the monopoly made sense when demand was small, like when lubricants and medication were important uses[1], but now that it's a huge percentage of every modern car's weight, what the hell! So Soquimich "asked" the Nuclear Commission of Chile (whatever it's called in English, there's no ambiguity there is one and that's it) if it could expand production dramatically. Well that's what they said. Soquimich owns not only that office thoroughly (very prolific campaign contributors with bribes underneath, as determined by I think DOJ, in a way that being brought to light won't change because there's pitiful campaign contributions otherwise, there is loyalty, they have power beyond just influence due to the owner being Pinochet's son-in-law), but many many others, but now there is that magical thing that capitalism brings, which makes it actually work, which is competition! Particularly from rock mining. Lithium has gone so far up that rock mining is no longer expensive in such a way that it can be ruined by a retaliatory and temporary increase in production by Soquimich, which was the game plan, basically Saudi Arabia of lithium. Saudi Arabia did do that. Although the also allowed all kinds of countries into OPEC, basically allowing a quota based on proven reserves and that was all there was to it. Not strictly, but pretty much. It used to be predatory pricing essentially. Well I by this point forgive them somewhat because they are producing much more, they are competing, they are no longer a tight monopoly doing pretty harmful things, they are in principle interested in ecology (it's in their best interest to be). And further there is one thing worse than a monopoly, which is nothingness. Not a single producer. That exists, the market for selling algorithms is that, no buyers and no sellers, so no market. Nothingness. One seller is much better than no seller, and lithium prices didn't hinder laptops and smartphones all that much, they did produce more many times, and they never owned a total monopoly, I think the majority or maybe 40%--very dominant--but not that much. And plus it used to be worth dick, nobody used lithium for anything, nothing, it was a terrible business to be in for decades, like lubricant and medication and nuclear ordnance, and none of them used lithium in real volume (the hydrogen bomb yes, I don't know I would say hundreds of kilograms per bomb since I can't realistically know exactly not declassified, not a whole lot of Museums of the History of Nuclear Weapons). So really it was a pretty tough racket for even a monopoly, they didn't make real money for many decades, they in practice needed to monopolize supply--no matter who extracted it in the Andes, they had to monopolize it, no choice. Or they would compete to terribly low prices, and one or both would have to drop out of the market. Reserves were a bit greater than now, market was tiny, totally marginal element with no applications. Even today it's all just the single application of batteries, little else. So ecology. Lithium buyers want ecology. Whether Soquimich likes it or not (and they're not pure evil they did some shit they got caught they're paying for it a bit, they lost their monopoly, now they compete), but part of the job is selling lithium and for that being ecological is mandatory. Wouldn't want to get a "conflict lithium" designation, that harms business. And it costs little, not a big polluter. I went to the biggest Chilean salt flat, I saw the lithium extraction like pumping down deep into the salt flat, but I saw all this in a tourist destination meant to look at the pink flamingos feeding on shrimp in the salt flat. That is pretty much all the life there is there, shrimp and flamingos. The flamingos were chilling, not afraid of the pump truck, and they were there to eat shrimp, so the shrimp clearly weren't being very prejudiced. That was it, there's no flora of any kind there, not right there nearby there's like dots in the ground some seasons, like nothing. There might be other birds sometimes. I would remember the tourist destination talking about other species, it was really just two...I suppose there was phytoplankton for the shrimp to eat. The tourist destination was really just about the flamingos, which are incredible, and they become pink from eating shrimp, but again if the lithium extraction fucked their life up they would not go within miles of a pump truck like that one. So ecological, and really, lithium extraction opens doors in every government office near a salt flat. Want to get permission to extract lithium, it's easy, "knock knock" "who's there" "lithium" "lithium who" "lithium who pays taxes" boom you're in. Municipal governments want money not to be such a problem, they want a budget, they want to get the wealth in their environment, and by this point it's basically a gold rush, even in Chile. And there is lots. That part of the Andes is the low-cost producer of lithium by a very wide margin, can't even mention a single salt flat worth anything outside that region. These days, lithium is green energy, it's the new oil. [1] Interesting fact, lithium commodity exports and bipolar medication are the same molecule: lithium carbonate. If you're bipolar in the traditional sense and run out of lithium carbonate pills while near lithium extraction, you can either end up streaking naked through the salt flat--which happens--or ask the extractor for a sample of their commodity, which being a sample will be pretty pure, and deal with bipolarity like that. It's the only example of a commodity that is at the same time medication that I know of. I joke about Chilean lithium, that before like 2020 you shouldn't touch lithium carbonate eve if you were diagnosed bipolar, it's even crazier. It did badly for a very long time, the monopoly and 1981 law were very strong.

thweoiru234 4y ago

beebeepka 4y ago

aortega 4y ago

EVs are just marketing, they not much more efficient than gas cars, it just moves the energy source from fossil fuels to...well, nuclear at best, or centralized fossil fuel generators at worst. You are not fixing global warming with EV cars. A small, dirty, gas moped is way more efficient, cheaper and green than the greenest EV car. The real revolution is electric bicycles, unsurprisingly one of the most popular means of transportation in China. I saw an excellent graph that I can't find at the moment, which shows that a human on a bicycle is 10 times more efficient than the most efficient biological locomotion known (that of fish).

afarrell 4y ago
Large problems need to be solved in pieces if they are to be solved at all. Anything else is boiling the ocean.
fsh 4y ago
Small IEC mopeds are hideously inefficient. They consume merely 2 or 3 times less fuel than a modern IEC car, despite being an order of magnitude lighter and much slower. Also they emit way more pollutants and are extremely noisy.

jillesvangurp 4y ago

No need to worry, plenty of lithium exists elsewhere and is already being actively mined. Until a few years ago, lithium was a by product of other types of mining that would be discarded as it did not have a huge market. That obviously changed in the last decade or so and there are now lots of companies looking all over the world for lithium deposits. And they are finding them too. And some of those new deposits are being mined already. Lithium is a fairly common element. It's not a rare earth. Extracting it and processing it are energy and water intensive processes and mining of itself also has issues with pollution. So doing that in the Andes where water is scarce, is indeed problematic. This is also a reason that some areas are hesitant with giving permits for lithium mining. Nevertheless, there are new mines in Nevada, Texas, Canada, Cornwall, Australia, and other places that are starting to ramp up. The sentiment in this thread seems to be a bit weirdly anti car and even pro ICE cars. However, this is not the show stopper that some ICE car fanatics want you to believe it is. If only they applied the same outrage against burning oil, fracking, oil spills, damage done by oil refineries, oil drilling in senstive ecosystems, and all the rest. The damage lithium mining does pales in comparison to that. This is just a minor growing pains for an exponentially growing industry that is going from almost no volume ten years ago to shipping tens of millions of vehicles as well as grid storage, home storage, and other batteries. Anything with wheels is going to stop burning stuff and start using lithium. And close 100% of that lithium can be recycled when the battery eventually reaches its end of life. Lithium ion and other batteries are part of the solution to the problems caused by burning oil. The solution is not advertising we all turn ourselves into Luddites. Good luck advertising it; but I have no confidence that you'll move the needle in a way that matters. Batteries on the other hand are succeeding where generations of hippies have failed to even slow down the growth at which the problem was accelerating. ICE cars are now legacy vehicles and the transition to EVs is well under way. Thanks to lithium ion batteries.

user3939382 4y ago
IMHO we should never be having a conversation about gas vs electric vehicles without discussing the sources (and future thereof) of the power grid energy charging these cars. Otherwise we run the risk of, for example, EVs laundering the output of the coal industry.