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Not everyone agrees that this is a good place for a mine: https://www.protectthackerpass.org/ https://www.protectthackerpass.org/ "to shut down the tar sands,

Not everyone agrees that this is a good place for a mine: https://www.protectthackerpass.org/ https://www.protectthackerpass.org/ "to shut down the tar sands, we actually have to shut down the tar sands, not just blow up other mountains elsewhere and hope that leads to the end of the tar sands." https://maxwilbert.substack.com/p/the-long-shadow-of-the-tar-sands https://maxwilbert.substack.com/p/the-long-shadow-of-the-tar...

MrBuddyCasino 2y ago
[flagged]
- simgt 2y ago
  It's because there are people with unambiguous moral purity opposing these projects that we can have a trade-off. Without them, nothing that goes against the unambiguous selfish interests of corporations would be left.
- shmageggy 2y ago
  Actually it looks like their arguments are presented entirely in terms of tradeoffs. They argue that the carbon benefit from electric cars (cited as very far down the list on e.g. https://drawdown.org/solutions/table-of-solutions https://drawdown.org/solutions/table-of-solutions) isn’t worth the cost to biodiversity, water use and pollution, cultural values and history, peacefulness and tranquility, etc. https://www.protectthackerpass.org/mining-lithium-at-thacker-pass-is-a-bright-green-lie/ https://www.protectthackerpass.org/mining-lithium-at-thacker...
  - robocat 2y ago
    Their argument: But many analyses actually find that the emissions reductions from switching to electric vehicles are quite minor. Paul Hawken, for example, doesn’t put electric cars in his top 10 climate solutions. In fact, it’s number 24 on his list, with almost ten times less impact than reducing food waste, nearly six times less impact than eliminating the use of refrigerants which are powerful greenhouse gases, and behind solutions like tropical rainforest restoration (about 5 times as effective at reducing emissions as is switching to EVs) and peatland protection (more than twice as effective). Producing a single electric car releases a lot of greenhouse gas emissions—about 9 tons on average. This is rising, as the size of electric cars is going up substantially. That means that even if operating electric cars reduces emissions overall, it’s not going to reduce them much. One calculation estimates reductions of 6 percent in the United States. That’s not enough to make much of a dent in warming.
    - robocat 2y ago
      > almost ten times less impact than reducing food waste, nearly six times less impact than eliminating the use of refrigerants I love this: it implies we should eliminate refrigerants and we should eliminate food waste... Like a child wanting two incompatible things. And I was answering "it looks like their arguments are presented entirely in terms of tradeoffs". Which to me contains the same locura - trying to face reality but failing to. Plus the other reply which is black and white: "unambiguous moral purity opposing these projects that we can have a trade-off. Without them, nothing that goes against the unambiguous selfish interests" And I've just noticed the original comment is flagged... Another form of denying and erasing the reality of others. Casting into the void.
  - ZeroGravitas 2y ago
    That list is only scale (e.g. 40 Gigatons saved by onshore wind or utility solar by 2050) and even on that measure EVs do pretty well at 10 Gigatons. But they do even better if you consider cost since the TCO of many electric vehicle classes is lower than the alternative, so you save money and carbon. These tradeoffs are displayed on a marginal abatement cost curve: https://www.edf.org/revamped-cost-curve-reaching-net-zero-emissions https://www.edf.org/revamped-cost-curve-reaching-net-zero-em... > $0 per ton or less > Technologies: Many measures in the power and transportation sectors are cost-effective right now, including several electric vehicle classes, electric efficiency, high-quality solar PV and onshore wind resources, and nuclear relicensing. The use of heat pumps in buildings is also available. > Emissions: Together, the measures in this range represent more than 1 gigaton of potential annual emission reductions by 2050 or 22% of way toward net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.
  - whimsicalism 2y ago
    Frankly, these articles are obviously written from a very left-wing perspective with essentially no relevance on the American political stage. None of the opinions stated in the protect* article are close to majority. > > Benson’s argument is that “mining critical metals is a necessity for a greener future.” But I would ask—a necessity for whom? For example, do child slaves laboring in Congolese cobalt mines call this necessary? Cobalt is an essential ingredient in mobile phones and electric vehicle batteries, but those kids aren’t driving Tesla’s and listening to podcasts all day. They need liberation, not consumer toys. “Liberation” is not the solution to extreme poverty in the Congo/DRC. You either need to convince wealthier societies to do vast wealth transfers or find a way to bootstrap a stronger economy, which very well might involve lithium mining.
    - MrBuddyCasino 2y ago
      I would argue leftism is very relevant on the American political stage, at the very least since WWII.
      - whimsicalism 2y ago
        Leftism is very relevant on the political stage, the type of leftism exemplified by this blog post is less so.
        krapp 2y ago
        The leftism exemplified by this blog post resembles actual leftism. Unfortunately, it only really exists in the confinement zone of social media, and isn't allowed anywhere near the political stage. What Americans consider "leftist" in their politics is just "socially progressive but center right." Hillary Clinton gets called a Communist, Barack Obama a Marxist. Americans wouldn't know an actual leftist if one threw a Molotov cocktail through their window.
        whimsicalism 2y ago
        Sure, the people winning elections aren't part of the capital-L Left but that doesn't mean the capital-L Left isn't an important political force even in America.
dendrite9 2y ago
On the topic of interpolation, I wonder if other areas along the trail of the Yellowstone hotspot might be easier/better sources of lithium. I suspect Nevada makes access easier than areas in the Snake river plain. But some of those areas might be more amenable to Lithium mining with less of an impact. https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/locations-yellowstone-hotspot-volcanic-fields https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/locations-yellowstone-hots... I specifically went out of my way on a trip a couple years ago to check out Thacker Pass to see where this planned Lithium mine was going. Unfortunately there was thick smoke followed a significant thunderstorm as a front came through and I didn't get to explore much.
robocat 2y ago
We are in a crisis of climate change, biodiversity and habitat loss. Thacker Pass is critical wildlife habitat for threatened, endangered, and endemic species including the greater sage-grouse, pronghorn, Lahontan cutthroat trout, and golden eagles. Thacker Pass, known as Peehee Mu’huh in Paiute, is sacred to regional Native American tribes. It’s too late to prevent Phase 1 of the Thacker Pass Lithium Mine, but there are opportunities to help prevent Phase 2. More broadly, we hope to protect the rest of McDermitt Caldera from Southern Oregon down to Thacker Pass from catastrophic lithium mining.
samatman 2y ago
You'll never obtain universal agreement for a mine, because there will always be a contingent for whom the correct number of mines is zero. They'll never put it that way, of course. But the decision process they exhibit is "new mine? no", and the consequence of realizing those preferences would be zero new mines. Fortunately, checking to make sure the entire Internet does not have a website disagreeing with the decision to start a mine, is not part of the process by which mining is started.

MrBuddyCasino 2y ago

[flagged]

simgt 2y ago
It's because there are people with unambiguous moral purity opposing these projects that we can have a trade-off. Without them, nothing that goes against the unambiguous selfish interests of corporations would be left.
shmageggy 2y ago
Actually it looks like their arguments are presented entirely in terms of tradeoffs. They argue that the carbon benefit from electric cars (cited as very far down the list on e.g. https://drawdown.org/solutions/table-of-solutions https://drawdown.org/solutions/table-of-solutions) isn’t worth the cost to biodiversity, water use and pollution, cultural values and history, peacefulness and tranquility, etc. https://www.protectthackerpass.org/mining-lithium-at-thacker-pass-is-a-bright-green-lie/ https://www.protectthackerpass.org/mining-lithium-at-thacker...
- robocat 2y ago
  Their argument: But many analyses actually find that the emissions reductions from switching to electric vehicles are quite minor. Paul Hawken, for example, doesn’t put electric cars in his top 10 climate solutions. In fact, it’s number 24 on his list, with almost ten times less impact than reducing food waste, nearly six times less impact than eliminating the use of refrigerants which are powerful greenhouse gases, and behind solutions like tropical rainforest restoration (about 5 times as effective at reducing emissions as is switching to EVs) and peatland protection (more than twice as effective). Producing a single electric car releases a lot of greenhouse gas emissions—about 9 tons on average. This is rising, as the size of electric cars is going up substantially. That means that even if operating electric cars reduces emissions overall, it’s not going to reduce them much. One calculation estimates reductions of 6 percent in the United States. That’s not enough to make much of a dent in warming.
  - robocat 2y ago
    > almost ten times less impact than reducing food waste, nearly six times less impact than eliminating the use of refrigerants I love this: it implies we should eliminate refrigerants and we should eliminate food waste... Like a child wanting two incompatible things. And I was answering "it looks like their arguments are presented entirely in terms of tradeoffs". Which to me contains the same locura - trying to face reality but failing to. Plus the other reply which is black and white: "unambiguous moral purity opposing these projects that we can have a trade-off. Without them, nothing that goes against the unambiguous selfish interests" And I've just noticed the original comment is flagged... Another form of denying and erasing the reality of others. Casting into the void.
- ZeroGravitas 2y ago
  That list is only scale (e.g. 40 Gigatons saved by onshore wind or utility solar by 2050) and even on that measure EVs do pretty well at 10 Gigatons. But they do even better if you consider cost since the TCO of many electric vehicle classes is lower than the alternative, so you save money and carbon. These tradeoffs are displayed on a marginal abatement cost curve: https://www.edf.org/revamped-cost-curve-reaching-net-zero-emissions https://www.edf.org/revamped-cost-curve-reaching-net-zero-em... > $0 per ton or less > Technologies: Many measures in the power and transportation sectors are cost-effective right now, including several electric vehicle classes, electric efficiency, high-quality solar PV and onshore wind resources, and nuclear relicensing. The use of heat pumps in buildings is also available. > Emissions: Together, the measures in this range represent more than 1 gigaton of potential annual emission reductions by 2050 or 22% of way toward net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.
- whimsicalism 2y ago
  Frankly, these articles are obviously written from a very left-wing perspective with essentially no relevance on the American political stage. None of the opinions stated in the protect* article are close to majority. > > Benson’s argument is that “mining critical metals is a necessity for a greener future.” But I would ask—a necessity for whom? For example, do child slaves laboring in Congolese cobalt mines call this necessary? Cobalt is an essential ingredient in mobile phones and electric vehicle batteries, but those kids aren’t driving Tesla’s and listening to podcasts all day. They need liberation, not consumer toys. “Liberation” is not the solution to extreme poverty in the Congo/DRC. You either need to convince wealthier societies to do vast wealth transfers or find a way to bootstrap a stronger economy, which very well might involve lithium mining.
  - MrBuddyCasino 2y ago
    I would argue leftism is very relevant on the American political stage, at the very least since WWII.
    - whimsicalism 2y ago
      Leftism is very relevant on the political stage, the type of leftism exemplified by this blog post is less so.
      - krapp 2y ago
        The leftism exemplified by this blog post resembles actual leftism. Unfortunately, it only really exists in the confinement zone of social media, and isn't allowed anywhere near the political stage. What Americans consider "leftist" in their politics is just "socially progressive but center right." Hillary Clinton gets called a Communist, Barack Obama a Marxist. Americans wouldn't know an actual leftist if one threw a Molotov cocktail through their window.
        whimsicalism 2y ago
        Sure, the people winning elections aren't part of the capital-L Left but that doesn't mean the capital-L Left isn't an important political force even in America.

dendrite9 2y ago

On the topic of interpolation, I wonder if other areas along the trail of the Yellowstone hotspot might be easier/better sources of lithium. I suspect Nevada makes access easier than areas in the Snake river plain. But some of those areas might be more amenable to Lithium mining with less of an impact. https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/locations-yellowstone-hotspot-volcanic-fields https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/locations-yellowstone-hots... I specifically went out of my way on a trip a couple years ago to check out Thacker Pass to see where this planned Lithium mine was going. Unfortunately there was thick smoke followed a significant thunderstorm as a front came through and I didn't get to explore much.

robocat 2y ago

We are in a crisis of climate change, biodiversity and habitat loss. Thacker Pass is critical wildlife habitat for threatened, endangered, and endemic species including the greater sage-grouse, pronghorn, Lahontan cutthroat trout, and golden eagles. Thacker Pass, known as Peehee Mu’huh in Paiute, is sacred to regional Native American tribes. It’s too late to prevent Phase 1 of the Thacker Pass Lithium Mine, but there are opportunities to help prevent Phase 2. More broadly, we hope to protect the rest of McDermitt Caldera from Southern Oregon down to Thacker Pass from catastrophic lithium mining.

samatman 2y ago

You'll never obtain universal agreement for a mine, because there will always be a contingent for whom the correct number of mines is zero. They'll never put it that way, of course. But the decision process they exhibit is "new mine? no", and the consequence of realizing those preferences would be zero new mines. Fortunately, checking to make sure the entire Internet does not have a website disagreeing with the decision to start a mine, is not part of the process by which mining is started.