[MCN] What we all should have known even without watching Planet of the Humans [planetofthehumans.com]

[Lance Olsen]

Excerpt : The most penetrating criticism I’ve seen of renewable energy—such as wind,  solar, hydropower, hydrogen and long-life battery technology— is that it’s being promoted at massive scale to reassure us that we can go on as before, with little if any change of lifestyle, no move beyond our comfort zones. That’s a comforting view, one that we’d all love to be true. And yet, it raises a big and uncomfortable question. Can we mine, baby, mine, to ensure no reduction of living standards, no uncomfortable change of lifestyle?  

Alas, the shift away from drill, baby drill for fossil fuels becomes a shift to mine, baby, mine, so that no one has to step out of their comfort zone.  Consumer demand for electric cars is a prime example. Heralded as the next wave of personal transportation, electric cars will require twice as much copper wire as today’s gasoline combustion vehicles. And building these cars will take yet a bit more mining for the cars themselves. There will be millions upon millions of them, and the mining industry sees it coming. 

Then there’s the matter of batteries to make the EVs run. Consumer demand for batteries — millions of batteries — translates directly to demand for mining cobalt, and lithium or nickel. The anticipation of such grand demand is already stirring talk of soaring prices for these minerals as consumer demand puts pressure on the supply side <https://oilprice.com/Metals/Commodities/Are-We-Really-Facing-A-Battery-Metal-Shortage.html>. The transition from fuel tank to battery is likely a lot less simple than many innocently assume.

Add smartphones. They, too, add pressure to mine for the minerals that go into batteries. And our lifestyles include repeated demand for mining every time we buy some next new improved phone with extra bells and whistles, and then add to our carbon footprint by using it to watch videos <https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/what-on-earth-newsletter-smartphone-carbon-footprint-1.4904887>.  Even solar powered garage door openers can increase consumer demand for batteries <https://greenfuture.io/sustainable-living/green-homes-eco-friendly-garage-door>. 

Solar panels themselves add their own demand to mine, baby, mine — think copper for wiring. The demand for solar panels is, at bottom, demand to maintain our energy consuming lifestyles, to stay in our comfort zones, to persist in the way we live. The same aim drives our trend toward electric cars, and the same demand lies behind the mining necessary to get the raw materials for wind power <https://mineralseducationcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/mec_fact_sheet_wind_turbines_0.pdf>.

There’s no doubt that we need to build and buy the machinery needed to generate renewable energy from solar and wind. The mining basic to the building is going to happen. There’s no stopping it. The need for building solar and wind capacity is too great to deny.
But there’s no denying that much of the demand is driven by striving for a comfort zone well beyond meeting anything that deserves the name of need. Recognizing this uncomfortable reality, 50 non-governmental organizations have recently scolded the World Bank for its Climate-Smart Mining proposal—which focuses a lot on how much mining would need to increase and not at all on how we need to reduce consumption <https://miningwatch.ca/news/2019/5/1/over-50-organizations-urge-world-bank-boost-recycling-circular-economy-non-mining>.
<<https://mountainjournal.org/renewable-energy-solves-one-problem-but-creates-another <https://mountainjournal.org/renewable-energy-solves-one-problem-but-creates-another>>>

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“A new area of study is the field that some of us are beginning to call social traps. The term refers to situations in society that contain traps formally like a fish trap, where men or whole societies get themselves started in some direction or some set of relationships that later prove to be unpleasant or lethal and that they see no easy way to back out of or to avoid."

John Platt. Social Traps. American Psychologist, August 1973




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