Questioning Lithium-ion Batteries

Questioning Lithium-ion Batteries

Editor’s note: When a hurricane like Helene or Milton ravages coastal communities, already-strained first responders face a novel, and growing, threat: the lithium-ion batteries that power electric vehicles, store PV solar, e-bikes, and countless gadgets. When exposed to the salty water of a storm surge or extreme heat, they are at risk of bursting into flames — and taking an entire house with them.

“Anything that’s lithium-ion and exposed to salt water can have an issue,” said Bill Morelli, the fire chief in Seminole, Florida, and the bigger the battery, the greater the threat. That’s what makes EVs especially hazardous. “[The problem] has expanded as they continue to be more and more popular.”

Also petrochemical-based building materials and furnishings have replaced traditional wood, fabric and metal materials in homes worldwide. But plastics are more flammable and release persistent toxic chemicals when burned or exposed to high heat. Over the last 25 years, wildfires have multiplied and intensified due to global warming, and often now jump the wildland-urban interface, burning whole neighborhoods and leaving behind a dangerous toxic home legacy. After the Camp Fire razed Paradise, California, in 2018, water utilities found high levels of volatile organic compounds in drinking water. Similar issues have arisen in places like Boulder County, Colorado, where the Marshall Fire destroyed nearly 1,000 structures in 2021,

“The extreme heatwaves of 2023, which fueled huge wildfires, and severe droughts, also undermined the land’s capacity to soak up atmospheric carbon. This diminished carbon uptake drove atmospheric carbon dioxide levels to new highs, intensifying concerns about accelerating climate change. Widespread wildfires across Canada and droughts in the Amazon in 2023 released about the same amount of carbon to the atmosphere as North America’s total fossil fuel emissions, underscoring the severe impact of climate change on natural ecosystems.”

The multibillion-dollar chemicals company 3M told customers it sold its firefighting foams to as safe and biodegradable, while having knowledge that they contained toxic per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), according to newly uncovered documents, reported The Guardian. A team of academic researchers, lawyers and journalists from 16 European countries has exposed a huge lobbying campaign aimed at gutting a proposed EU-wide restriction on the use of “forever chemicals”.

The following story talks about the Moss Landing fire but there was also a fire that erupted in southeast Missouri at one of world’s largest lithium-ion battery recycling facilities and also in Madison County, Illinois.


 

By KATIE SINGER / Katie Singer’s Substack

While finishing this Substack, I learned about the explosive fire that started January 16, 2025 at Moss Landing, California’s Vistra Power Plant, the world’s largest battery energy storage facility, housing tens of thousands of lithium-ion batteries. By Friday, January 17, flames had consumed 75% of the facility’s batteries. Toxic fumes from the batteries’ chemicals forced evacuations and closed roads around Moss Landing. Because the highly-charged batteries can’t be extinguished—they must burn out—this fire and its toxins could burn for a long time.

Batteries’ toxic gases can cause respiratory, skin and eye problems. Toxic gases from burning lithium-ion batteries can contaminate wildlife such as Monterey Bay’s unique tidal wetland.

This is the fourth fire at the Moss Landing battery storage facility.

Referring to last week’s explosive fire, County Supervisor Glenn Church said, “This is a wake-up call for the industry. If we’re going to move ahead with sustainable energy, we need a safe battery system in place. State of the art safety protocols did not work.”

County officials lifted evacuation orders Friday evening after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found “no threat to human health.” Still, Highway 1 remains closed, and health officials in Monterey, San Venito and Santa Cruz counties advise residents to stay indoors, turn off ventilation systems and limit outdoor exposure. Www.ksbw.com provides live updates.

WILDFIRES AND URBAN FIRES

When the Los Angeles fires started January 7, I learned about the differences between wild and urban fires. Wildfires occur in forests or grasslands, fueled by trees or other vegetation. More than 80% of wildfires start by human activities like abandoned cigarettes, campfires and barbeques. Wildfire smoke can penetrate deep into peoples’ lungs and aggravate heart and lung diseases.

Urban fires—conflagrations—are fueled by combustible construction materials including wood framing, plastics, metals, furniture fabric and solar panels (hazardous waste). Because of houses’ flammable contents, urban fires burn extremely hot and generate toxic emissions. High winds and insufficient water supply intensify urban fires. Burning houses emit chemical toxins and generate more heat than burning trees (which, if alive, hold fire-resistant moisture).

While powerlines and transformers are designed to withstand wind speeds up to 56mph, some gusts in the LA fires exceeded 100mph.

INCLUDING LITHIUM-ION BATTERIES IN FIRE RISK ASSESSMENTS

Here’s a question: How do lithium-ion batteries contribute to urban fires?

Like much of the world, Southern California is now dotted with lithium batteries at every telecom cell site (for backup in the event of a power outage); in every electric vehicle, e-bike and hoverboard; in every EV charger; in laptops, tablets and smartphones—and their chargers; in smart utility meters on grid-connected houses and buildings; in off-grid rooftop solar PV systems’ batteries; in battery energy storage systems (BESS) for large-scale solar facilities and wind facilities.

That’s a lot of lithium-ion batteries.

If a lithium-ion battery’s chemicals heat up and can’t cool down, the battery can catch fire, explode and release toxic, flammable gases such as fluoride. Like trick birthday candles, EV batteries (holding energy to burn for as much as 24 hours) can re-ignite. Lithium-ion batteries’ temperature can quickly reach 932 degrees Fahrenheit (500 degrees Celsius). They can burn as high as 2200F (1100C). An EV fire burns at 5,000 degrees F (2,760 C). A gas-powered vehicle fire burns at 1,500 F (815C).

Because of the increase and severity of battery storage systems’ explosions and fires, The National Fire Protection Association is considering an update to its Battery Safety Code. These systems should be designed to prevent explosions—not just fires.

 

RECOGNIZING THE FIRE RISKS CAUSED BY DRY AND COVERED SOIL

LA has endured eight months without rain. Drought increases fire risk.

Do fire risks also increase when soil can’t absorb and hold water? Soil’s ability to absorb and hold water is one of the Earth’s main cooling mechanisms. How do we reconcile this when we’ve covered land with paved roads, houses, malls, parking lots, data centers and battery storage facilities?

How can we re-hydrate a dry region?

REBUILDING QUESTIONS

When rebuilding, what policies will ensure that fire’s toxic emissions (to air, soil and groundwater) will not affect future residents and farmers? Given that Governor Newsom has suspended environmental reviews to speed rebuilding in wildfire zones, what will protect residents in rebuilt areas from toxic exposures?

What materials and practices prevent new fires?

What measures would prevent lithium-ion batteries (at cell sites, in electric vehicles, smart meters, laptops, tablets, smartphones, rooftop solar system batteries, etc.) from catching fire and exploding? Could we prohibit lithium-ion batteries until they’re proven safe and ecologically sound from cradle-to-grave? New Hampshire legislators have introduced an ACT that would allow towns to decline 5G cell sites.

How could rebuilding Los Angeles respect the Earth? To reduce fire risk, support healthy water cycling and increase locally-produced food, could rebuilding policies encourage healthy soil structure?

For inspired building, see Mully (about a Kenyan who has fed, housed and educated 27,000+ orphans and turned dry dirt into an oasis); The Power of Community (about Cuba after the USSR quit supplying it with oil, overnight, in 1989); and Alpha Lo & Didi Pershouse speaking about rehydrating Los Angeles.

To provide much-needed affordable housing in LA and elsewhere, would any mansion-owners turn their homes into multiple-family units?

RECONSIDER “SUSTAINABILITY”

Many communities and corporations aim to sustain themselves by installing battery energy storage systems and solar facilities. According to the California Energy Commission, since 2020, battery storage in the state has increased sevenfold—from 1,474 megawatts in 2020 to 10,383 megawatts by mid-2024. One megawatt can power 750 homes.

In New Mexico, AES Corporation has proposed building a 96 MW, 700-acre solar facility with 45 MWs/39 battery containers in Santa Fe County. (Each battery is about 39’ x 10’ x 8’.) Santa Fe’s Green Chamber of Commerce, the Sierra Club’s Rio Grande Chapter, the Global Warming Express and 350 Santa Fe support AES’s project.

Opponents of AES’s facility include the San Marcos Association, the Clean Energy Coalition and Ashley Schannauer (formerly a hearing officer for the state’s Public Regulatory Commission).

I frequently hear people call battery storage, solar PVs, industrial wind and EVs “sustainable.” Looked at from their cradles to their graves, this is simply not true. Mining lithium ravages ecosystems. So does burning coal and trees to make solar panels’ silicon. Refining lithium and making silicon electrically-conductive takes millions of gallons of water, daily. At end-of-life, these technologies are hazardous waste.

Meanwhile, I have many friends with rooftop solar systems and EVs. I would welcome forums about reducing our overall use of energy, water, extractions and international supply chains. I would welcome learning how to live with less.

As survivors of the LA fires, battery fires, Hurricane Helene, Israel’s decimation of Gaza and other catastrophes rebuild, what would communities look like if we considered our technologies’ impacts to ecosystems and public health from their cradles to graves? What would our communities look like if we think, “Ecosystems and public health first?”

 

FOR MORE INFO:

Jeff Gibbs and Michael Moore’s documentary, “Planet of the Humans

Julia Barnes’ film, “Bright Green Lies

https://www.watchduty.org

alerts and monitors wildfires in the American West.

https//mutualaidla.org

lists mutual aid organizations.

Science and the California Wildfires with George Wuerthner

Sandoval County, NM, also faces a large-scale solar project with 220 MW of solar panels and 110 MW of battery storage.

New Mexicans for Responsible Renewables supports New Mexico’s avoiding unnecessary risks to our communities and further destruction to our environment.

THE POWER GRID

Discovering Power’s Traps: a primer for electricity users

Fire hazards at the battery storage system coming near you

SOS: San Onofre Syndrome: Nuclear Power’s Legacy Note: The documentary starts 2025 with screenings around California, Eugene, Madrid and on Amazon Prime. See also “Risks of geologic disposal of weapons plutonium.”

A Time-Sensitive Invitation to Protect New Mexico from Smart Meters’ Fire Hazards

SOLAR PVs

21 questions for solar PV explorers

Call Me a NIMBY

Do I report what I’ve learned about solar PVs—or live with it privately?

E-VEHICLES

How/can we protect the Earth when we need a car?

Who’s in charge of EV chargers?

When Land I Love Holds Lithium: Max Wilbert on Thacker Pass, Nevada

Banner Moss Landing battery plant fire, January 16-17, 2025.

MY MISTAKE While writing article I got help from a physicist of fire ignition, an electrical engineer, a forensic fire investigator and an electrician. I also went to the Internet, which informed me that in the event of an outage, cell sites’ power is backed up by lithium-ion batteries. This isn’t totally correct. While 5G small cells primarily use lithium ion batteries, larger cell towers usually backup with lead-acid batteries. I apologize for this error.

These Books Are Based On A Faulty Premise

These Books Are Based On A Faulty Premise

ELISABETH ROBSON
JUL 03, 2024

How a lack of imagination perpetuates this ecocidal way of life

I’ve recently read three books, all of which I’m glad I read, and all of which have the same fatal flaw: they are all constructed around a faulty premise.

A Poison Like No Other: How Microplastics Corrupted Our Planet and Our Bodies by Matt Simon is a book about the absolutely catastrophic impacts of plastic. The book describes how micro- and nanoplastics are everywhere: they are in the air we breathe, in the water we drink, the food we eat, the soil, our bodies (brains, blood, lungs, placentas, fetuses, testicles; everywhere we’ve researchers have looked, they’ve found plastic), and the bodies of every living being on the planet including plants. These microplastics are leaking CO2, contributing to climate change; leaking toxics, poisoning us and all living beings who ingest these plastics; clogging our veins, our lungs, our brains.

The book’s fatal flaw? That we “need” plastic in order to maintain this ecocidal way of life, and so we must mitigate for the harms of plastic rather than eliminate plastic entirely.

Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet by Ben Goldfarb is a book about the absolutely catastrophic impacts of roads. The book describes the mass killing (murder?) of wildlife and humans the world’s 40 million miles of roads perpetrate on a daily basis; the habitat fragmentation, the pollution, the noise, the isolation that roads cause, no matter what is driven on them. It is an entire book about the nightmare that is roads for all living beings on the planet.

Its fatal flaw? That we “need” roads in order to maintain this ecocidal way of life, and so we must mitigate for the harms of roads rather than eliminate roads entirely.

Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives by Siddharth Kara is a book about the absolutely catastrophic impacts of mining, primarily cobalt but also copper, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The book describes in devastating detail the destitution of the lives destroyed by cobalt mining; the drudgery, slavery, pollution, health impacts, environmental ruination; the horrors that one can barely believe but are real, all to supply materials for our tech gadgets and electric vehicles.

Its fatal flaw? That we “need” this technology in order to maintain this ecocidal way of life, and so we must mitigate for the harms caused by mining rather than eliminate mining entirely.

In each case, the author has written a book describing why plastic, roads, and mining are untenable for a future of life on planet Earth. In each case, the author excuses and rationalizes the very thing he’s just written an entire book explaining why they cannot be excused; cannot be rationalized. It is truly astonishing.

Plastic

In A Poison Like No Other, Simon writes:

“Plastics aren’t going anywhere—they’re just too useful and too omnipresent. And even if a virus killed every human next week, our plastic would still decay and flush out to sea and take to the air, until one day a long time from now it will all have decomposed as far as it can go, wrapping the planet in a perpetual nanoplastic haze. But there are ways to at least thin that haze by slowing the emission of plastics of all sizes.”

In one paragraph, Simon manages to explain why any new plastic added to the plastic already in the environment is a disaster, and simultaneously suggest that we can somehow reduce the impacts by “slowing the emission” of plastics.

No. All new plastic added to the existing plastic in the world will add to the haze. Slowing the emission of plastics is better than not slowing it, but Simon’s book lays out a compelling case for why we need to entirely eliminate plastic and then he concludes that we should slow emissions of plastic, thus compounding the plastic pollution, just a bit more slowly.

This is like the people who think that by slowing CO2 emissions we can mitigate climate change. No. CO2 emissions are cumulative, like plastic in the environment is cumulative. Anything but zero emissions makes the problem worse. Slow is better than fast, but zero is the only acceptable answer to “How much plastic should we continue to make?” just like zero is the only acceptable answer to “How much CO2 is acceptable to emit from burning fossil fuels and destroying the land?”

Zero.

Simon notes that “in the grand scheme of human existence, it wasn’t that long ago that we got along just fine without plastic.” He’s so close to seeing that we could exist without plastic again! And then he ruins it by saying “There’s a path in which we rein in single-use packaging, fix the busted economics of recycling, and get a microfiber filter in every washing machine.”

Reining in single-use plastics? Get a microfiber filter on every washing machine? Sure, that’s better than nothing, but will do little in the big scheme of things. Recycling, we now know, is a farce: it is down-cycling, not recycling, and it essentially turns macroplastic into micro- and nanoplastic at incredible rates. New research shows recycling may actually be the number one source of microplastic, greater even than clothes and tires which were the number one and two sources when Simon wrote his book.

Using less plastic would be great. And the only conclusion a sane person can draw after reading Simon’s book is that zero plastic is what we should be aiming for. Anything more is not acceptable.

Roads

In Crossings, Goldfarb writes:

“‘A thing is right,’ Aldo Leopold famously wrote in his call for a land ethic, ‘when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community.’ By that standard roads are the wrongest things imaginable, agents of chaos that shatter biotic integrity wherever they intrude.”

Like Simon, Goldfarb is so close to seeing that roads are so wrong that we should and could eliminate them. The future will be small, local and low-tech. It has to be, because large, global and high-tech have pushed us into catastrophic ecological overshoot, are entirely dependent on fossil fuels, and are destroying the biosphere. That way of life cannot last. So the roads we’ve built as part of a large, global and high-tech way of life will soon become mostly useless.

There are 40 million miles of roads on Earth today, and as Goldfarb writes, “More than twenty-five million miles of new road lanes will be built worldwide by 2050, many through the world’s remaining intact habitats, a concrete wave that the ecologist Willam Laurence has described as an ‘infrastructure tsunami.’”

The existing roads are a catastrophe; building more roads will only compound that catastrophe.

The author writes:

“The allure of the car is so strong that it has persuaded Americans to treat forty thousand human lives as expendable each year; what chance does wildlife have?”

“A half-century ago, just 3 percent of land-dwelling mammals met their end on a road; by 2017 the toll had quadrupled. It has never been more dangerous to set paw, hoof, or scaly belly on the highway.”

“More birds die on American roads every week than were slain by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.”

How can someone write these words and conclude anything but that roads must be eliminated? And yet, somehow Goldfarb then writes that we need a “road ethic”, and waxes lyrical about a tiny number of wildlife over- and underpasses existing and planned that, yes, are better than doing nothing, but will do very little to stop the slaughter of living beings on roads, and absolutely nothing to stop the 25 million new miles of roads planned through some of the world’s last remaining intact habitats.

Cars are terrible for the environment, no matter what powers them. The roads they are driven on are terrible for the environment. Goldfarb’s book makes this crystal clear. How does he not conclude that we need to eliminate roads? It’s so obvious we must. I find this astonishing, given that it is the environment that keeps us all alive.

Humans have been driving cars for only about 135 years. Obviously we drove horse- and donkey-pulled carts on roads for millennia before cars were invented; there were far fewer roads, the roads that existed were dirt tracks rather that fossil fueled-concrete and asphalt, and those roads had far fewer impacts, just like carts have far less impact than cars. Perhaps most important, human population was far, far lower so the overall impact of the roads that existed before industrial civilization was correspondingly lower.

The only conclusion a sane person can draw after reading Goldfarb’s book is that zero new roads and dismantling existing roads is what we should be aiming for, along with a phase-out of cars and trucks. Anything else is unacceptable.

Cobalt

In Cobalt Red, Kara writes:

“Since about one-fourth of CO2 emissions are created by vehicles with internal combustion engines, the expansion of battery-powered transportation provides the only solution.”

Not only is this false, it displays a stunning lack of imagination on the part of Kara.

Again: humans have been driving cars for only about 135 years, out of our 300,000 year existence on Earth. We’ve had cobalt-containing lithium-ion batteries for only about 40 years. This ecocidal way of life is so alluring, so pervasive, so addicting that we—and Kara, specifically—simply cannot see out of the prison it is holding us in.

If we cannot even imagine a life without cars, without batteries, without technology, then we have absolutely no hope of stopping or even slowing the destruction of our only home.

Cobalt Red is primarily about the desperation of artisanal miners, adults and children, in DRC. It describes an industry that treats people as cogs in a machine and throws them away casually:

“Imagine if a mining company came to the place where you live and they kick you out. They destroy all your belongings except whatever you can carry in your own hands. Then they build a mine because there are minerals in the ground, and they keep you out with soldiers. What can you do if there is no one to help you?

‘They kicked us from our homes!’ an elderly man with patchy skin, Samy, exclaimed. ‘We lived on that land for three generations before the mining companies came. We grew vegetables and caught fish. They threw us out and now we cannot find enough food to find our families.’”

It is secondarily about the devastating environmental impacts of mining. These impacts occur whether it is men in machines or children with pickaxes and rocks in their hands doing the mining. The end result is the same: land, air, water, and natural and human communities destroyed:

“A thick cloud of fumes, grit, and ash suffocates the land. Sky and earth meet vaguely above the hills at some obscure and unattainable frontier. Villages along the road are coated with airborne debris. Children scamper between huts like balls of dust. There are no flowers to be found. No birds in the sky. No placid streams. No pleasant breezes. The ornaments of nature are gone. All color seems pale and unformed. Only the fragments of life remain. This is Lualaba Province, where cobalt is king.”

Mining for the materials to make everything from our gadgets to our cars; materials to build roads, to make plastic; materials to create the things we all take for granted every single day, is destroying the planet. The author notes:

“We would not send the children of Cupertino to scrounge for cobalt in toxic pits, so why is it permissible to send the children of the Congo?”

Here in the U.S. with our environmental laws, we don’t allow children to work in mines. But we do allow men driving massive mining machines to destroy the land that the families of nearby children have foraged on for generations; to create air pollution that nearby children will breathe; to stack or dam toxic tailings, contaminating the soil and water for eons, soil and water the children need to survive and grow up healthy.

We allow mining companies to “take” golden eagles and pygmy rabbits and other endangered and threatened species; to destroy the homes of wild beings who are just trying to raise their own children on land that holds the same materials the children in the Congo mine with their bare hands.

Kara concludes that “If major technology companies, EV manufacturers, and mining companies acknowledged that artisanal miners were an integral part of their cobalt supply chains and treated them with equal humanity as any other employee, most everything that needs to be done to resolve the calamities currently afflicting artisanal mining would be done.”

Yes, helping the artisanal miners would be better than nothing. Stopping the child trafficking, the sexual assaults, the sickness, the injuries, the penury, and the deaths is critically important. But that won’t stop the mining; that won’t stop the pollution and environmental devastation that mining causes.

The only conclusion a sane person can draw after reading Kara’s book is that zero artisanal mining is what we should be aiming for. An especially perceptive person reading his book will conclude that zero mining should be the real goal. Anything else really is unacceptable.

Connections

The faulty premise behind all three of these books is that this ecocidal way of life can and should continue. This is false. It can’t, it shouldn’t; ultimately, of course, it won’t.

Not only are these books connected by the stunning lack of understanding by their authors of the implications of their own work; they are also connected in that they describe just three of the many devastating implications of modern life. One can imagine a thousand books just like these, about every aspect of modern life we take for granted.

All three of these books are well-worth reading if you, dear reader, want to know the truth about what this ecocidal way of life is doing to us, to the natural world, to other people, and to the planet as a whole. Each of these books is absolutely devastating to read, if you truly take in what they are saying and deeply understand what we have done, and what we are doing, right now. The perversion of all that is good in the world in service to industry and consumption will wreck you to your core, if you let it—and I implore you to let it.

Why? Because only if we truly understand the implications of the horrors these books describe will we be able to make change. Real change. Not the half measures, the compromises, the ineffectual so-called “solutions” suggested by the authors of these books, but major, life-altering change that is what we need to stop the slaughter of the planet.

I will leave you with this last quote from Cobalt Red that says pretty much everything I’ve been trying to say in this essay:

“A lone girl stood atop a dome of dirt, hands on her hips, eyes cast long across the barren land where giant trees once ruled. Her gold-and-indigo sarong fluttered wildly in the wind as she surveyed the ruin of people and earth. Beyond the horizon, beyond all reason and morality, people from another world awoke and checked their smartphones. None of the artisanal miners I met in Kipushi had ever even seen one.”

Banner: Covers of the books discussed in this essay.

The Green Deceit of Deep Sea Mining

The Green Deceit of Deep Sea Mining

Editor’s note: Already threatened by overfishing, acidification, overheating, the collapse of coral reefs, declining plankton populations, plastic pollution, and deep sea oil drilling, the world’s oceans now face a new threat: mining, disguised as “green.”

This piece, originally published in Counterpunch, describes the threat of deep sea mining. If you want to help protect the oceans from this threat, email deepseadefenders@protonmail.com or find Deep Sea Defenders on Facebook and Twitter @deepseadefender


By Joshua Clinton

“To build a green future, in the next couple of decades the world will need to mine more metal than we’ve mined in our entire history” says Gerard Barron, CEO of The Metals Company.

There’s some truth to that statement – if we wish to meet the rising demand for new technologies, we’d need to see a sharp increase in metal extraction. After all, electric vehicles require 4x the amount of metals found in standard cars, and a single wind turbine requires 340 tonnes of metal.

Here’s the problem: the ‘green future’ he’s selling us is a lie, because what Barron fails to divulge in his upbeat sales pitch, is the ecological upheaval that his company’s plans would surely wreak.

The Metals Company plans to mine the seabed for polymetallic nodules; potato-sized objects containing metals like nickel, copper, and cobalt; essential in the production of the lithium-ion batteries being used for electric cars and (so-called) renewable energy storage.

They’re located (among other places) in the Clarion-Clipperton zone, an area of the Pacific Ocean equivalent in size to the entire Indian Subcontinent. The seabed here (despite the claims of company officials) isn’t simply a ‘vast marine desert’, it’s home to a wide variety of species whose existence depends upon the presence of these nodules.

So, what would the mining process actually look like?

They’re building house-sized machines which would indiscriminately vacuum-up the contents of the seabed and send it to a ship on the surface. This includes an estimated 2 to 6 million cubic feet of marine sediment (granulated rock) per day for every machine in operation, only then to be subsequently dumped right back into the ocean.

It’s been stated that the sediment will be returned to a depth below 1200m. That’s called the Bathypelagic zone (Midnight Zone) – and some animals who live there include viperfish, anglerfish, frill sharks, eels, and sperm whales. These would be among the first creatures to acquire a gill-full of gravel.

But furthermore, the floating particles could be carried throughout the entire water column by powerful currents in a natural process called ‘downwelling’ & ‘upwelling’ – damaging (perhaps fatally) the respiratory systems of billions of fish.

This, plus the impact that light & sound disturbances from mining equipment would have on creatures adapted to conditions of silence & darkness, raises the likelihood of ecosystem collapse. Ocean ecosystems are already threatened by multiple stressors like overfishing, ocean acidification, & plastic pollution – do we really want to add anything else to the list?

The Metals Company claims that seabed extraction is a more ‘sustainable’ method of sourcing metal than land-based mining. Whenever anyone pulls-out the ‘sustainability’ buzzword, two premises need to be addressed:

#1: what are they sustaining? – clearly not biodiversity.

#2: how long do they wish to sustain it for?

The answer to the first question: an industrial way of life. The way of life which propels us to greedily squander nature’s bounty.

The answer to the second question: for as long as there’s anything left of the living world to convert into commodities.

This isn’t about saving the planet. It’s about creating new technologies which will prolong & exacerbate the destruction of the planet, and a false narrative that this is all somehow morally justifiable. Here’s a basic rule: if we consume the Earth at a rate faster than it can regenerate – eventually there won’t be anything left to take. Even Gregory Stone (chief scientist at The Metals Company) acknowledges this:

“On-land commodities are being exhausted…and [the deep sea] is the natural next place to look…these are some of the last resources that the Earth has to give us”.

Are we really prepared to blow-through everything that’s left? To leave no stone (or nodule) left unturned, just so that we can continue driving around in cars & tooting our horns?

The ends don’t really justify the means. Any right-minded, white westerner can reflect upon the cruelty of the transatlantic slave trade and conclude: “Yikes, my ancestors should’ve left the people of West Africa alone”.

Jazz music probably wouldn’t have existed without the transatlantic slave trade. Do I like jazz music? Sure, but you know what I like better? Thriving communities living in environments to which they’re socially and biologically adapted.

Communities like the ocean-dwelling phytoplankton who generate 80% of the Earth’s oxygen, who play a crucial role in atmospheric carbon regulation, and whose future hangs in the balance should deep-sea mining go ahead.

So, what can we do to stop this from happening?

The country of Nauru, which (having signed a contract with The Metals Company) would stand to benefit financially from deep sea mining, have declared that operations will go ahead in 2024, within waters assigned to them by the ISA (International Seabed Authority) – that means we have about two years to stop this.

So far, campaigners such as Greenpeace, WWF, and the government of Fiji have collaborated on a proposed 10-year moratorium (temporary ban) on deep sea mining until more is known about its effects on deep sea ecosystems.

Going a step further, organisations like Blue Planet Society and Pacific Blue Line are calling for an outright ban.

You (the reader) can help by educating yourself more on the subject, by spreading awareness, by signing online petitions, and by joining or organizing demonstrations against deep sea mining…but before you go and do those things, let me finish with a final appeal:

As environmentalists, we might not instinctively care quite as much about the deep sea as we do about other landscapes like rainforests or prairies. We’re land mammals after all; we don’t belong down there, and neither should we strive to assimilate. However, it’s important that we look beyond our human bias, because the deep sea comprises 60% of Earth’s surface. This means that the wellbeing of the ocean is crucial for the wellbeing of the planet as a whole.

Industrialists can’t understand this. They look upon the deep sea as a challenge, as another frontier just waiting to be conquered, and none of the native beings who live there will stand in their way.

We can stand in their way.

Help to stop deep sea mining, before it starts.


Joshua Clinton is a long-term environmental devotee, campaign organizer, & freelance writer. He can be reached at: tr33tantra@gmail.com.

Featured image by Jim Beaudoin at Unsplash.

Letter #16 Re-Evaluating Solar Photovoltaic Power: Considering the ecological impacts we aim to reduce

Letter #16 Re-Evaluating Solar Photovoltaic Power: Considering the ecological impacts we aim to reduce

In her “Letter to Greta Thunberg” series, Katie Singer explains the real ecological impacts of so many modern technologies on which the hope for a bright green (tech) future is based on.


A letter to Greta Thunberg
by Katie Singer

Even when reality is harsh, I prefer it. I’d rather engineers say that my water could be off for three hours than tell me that replacing the valve will take one hour. I prefer knowing whether or not tomatoes come from genetically modified seed. If dyeing denim wreaks ecological hazards, I’d rather not keep ignorant.

The illusion that we’re doing good when we’re actually causing harm is not constructive. With reality, discovering true solutions becomes possible.

As extreme weather events (caused, at least in part, by fossil fuels’ greenhouse gas [GHG] emissions) challenge electrical infrastructures, we need due diligent evaluations that help us adapt to increasingly unpredictable situations—and drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions and ecological damage. I have a hard time imagining a future without electricity, refrigerators, stoves, washing machines, phones and vehicles. I also know that producing and disposing of manufactured goods ravages the Earth.

Internationally, governments are investing in solar photovoltaics (PVs) because they promise less ecological impacts than other fuel sources. First, I vote for reviewing aspects of solar systems that tend to be overlooked.

Coal-fired power plants commonly provide electricity to smelt silicon for solar panels. Photo credit: Petr Štefek

Hazards of Solar Photovoltaic Power
1. Manufacturing silicon wafers for solar panels depends on fossil fuels, nuclear and/or hydro power. Neither solar nor wind energy can power a smelter, because interrupted delivery of electricity can cause explosions at the factory. Solar PV panels’ silicon wafers are “one of the most highly refined artifacts ever created.”[1] Manufacturing silicon wafers starts with mining quartz; pure carbon (i.e. petroleum coke [an oil byproduct] or charcoal from burning trees without oxygen); and harvesting hard, dense wood, then transporting these substances, often internationally, to a smelter that is kept at 3000F (1648C) for years at a time. Typically, smelters are powered by electricity generated by a combination of coal, natural gas, nuclear and hydro power. The first step in refining the quartz produces metallurgical grade silicon. Manufacturing solar-grade silicon (with only one impurity per million) requires several other energy-intensive, greenhouse gas (GHG) and toxic waste-emitting steps. [2] [3] [4]

2. Manufacturing silicon wafers generates toxic emissions
In 2016, New York State’s Department of Environmental Conservation issued Globe Metallurgical Inc. a permit to release, per year: up to 250 tons of carbon monoxide, 10 tons of formaldehyde, 10 tons of hydrogen chloride, 10 tons of lead, 75,000 tons of oxides of nitrogen, 75,000 tons of particulates, 10 tons of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, 40 tons of sulfur dioxide and up to 7 tons of sulfuric acid mist. To clarify, this is the permittable amount of toxins allowed annually for one metallurgical-grade silicon smelter in New York State. [5] Hazardous emissions generated by silicon manufacturing in China (the world’s leading manufacturer of solar PVs) likely has significantly less regulatory limits.

3. PV panels’ coating is toxic
PV panels are coated with fluorinated polymers, a kind of Teflon. Teflon films for PV modules contain polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) and fluorinated ethylene (FEP). When these chemicals get into drinking water, farming water, food packaging and other common materials, people become exposed. About 97% of Americans have per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAs) in their blood. These chemicals do not break down in the environment or in the human body, and they can accumulate over time. [6] [7] While the long-term health effects of exposure to PFAs are unknown, studies submitted to the EPA by DuPont (which manufactures them) from 2006 to 2013 show that they caused tumors and reproductive problems in lab animals. Perfluorinated chemicals also increase risk of testicular and kidney cancers, ulcerative colitis (Crohn’s disease), thyroid disease, pregnancy-induced hypertension (pre-eclampsia) and elevated cholesterol. How much PTFEs are used in solar panels? How much leaks during routine operation—and when hailstorms (for example) break a panels’ glass? How much PTFE leaks from panels discarded in landfills? How little PFA is needed to impact health?

4. Manufacturing solar panels generates toxic waste. In California, between 2007 and the first half of 2011, seventeen of the state’s 44 solar-cell manufacturing facilities produced 46.5 million pounds of sludge (semi-solid waste) and contaminated water. California’s hazardous waste facilities received about 97 percent of this waste; more than 1.4 million pounds were transported to facilities in nine other states, adding to solar cells’ carbon footprint. [8]

5. Solar PV panels can disrupt aquatic insects’ reproduction. At least 300 species of aquatic insects (i.e. mayflies, caddis flies, beetles and stoneflies) typically lay their eggs on the surface of water. Birds, frogs and fish rely on these aquatic insects for food. Aquatic insects can mistake solar panels’ shiny dark surfaces for water. When they mate on panels, the insects become vulnerable to predators. When they lay their eggs on the panels’ surface, their efforts to reproduce fail. Covering panels with stripes of white tape or similar markings significantly reduces insect attraction to panels. Such markings can reduce panels’ energy collection by about 1.8 percent. Researchers also recommend not installing solar panels near bodies of water or in the desert, where water is scarce. [9]

Solar PV users may be unaware of their system’s ecological impacts. Photo credit: Vivint Solar from Pexels

6. Unless solar PV users have battery backup (unless they’re off-grid), utilities are obliged to provide them with on-demand power at night and on cloudy days. Most of a utility’s expenses are dedicated not to fuel, but to maintaining infrastructure—substations, power lines, transformers, meters and professional engineers who monitor voltage control and who constantly balance supply of and demand for power. [10] Excess power reserves will increase the frequency of alternating current. When the current’s frequency speeds up, a motor’s timing can be thrown off. Manufacturing systems and household electronics can have shortened life or fail catastrophically. Inadequate reserves of power can result in outages.

The utility’s generator provides a kind of buffer to its power supply and its demands. Rooftop solar systems do not have a buffer.

In California, where grid-dependent rooftop solar has proliferated, utilities sometimes pay nearby states to take their excess power in order to prevent speeding up of their systems’ frequency. [11]

Rooftop solar (and wind turbine) systems have not reduced fossil-fuel-powered utilities. In France, from 2002-2019, while electricity consumption remained stable, a strong increase in solar and wind powered energy (over 100 GW) did not reduce the capacity of power plants fueled by coal, gas, nuclear and hydro. [12]

Comparing GHG emissions generated by different fuel sources shows that solar PV is better than gas and coal, but much worse than nuclear and wind power. A solar PV system’s use of batteries increases total emissions dramatically. Compared to nuclear or fossil fuel plants, PV has little “energy return on energy Invested.” [13]

7. Going off-grid requires batteries, which are toxic. Lead-acid batteries are the least expensive option; they also have a short life and lower depth of discharge (capacity) than other options. Lead is a potent neurotoxin that causes irreparable harm to children’s brains. Internationally, because of discarded lead-acid batteries, one in three children have dangerous lead levels in their blood. [14] Lithium-ion batteries have a longer lifespan and capacity compared to lead acid batteries. However, lithium processing takes water from farmers and poisons waterways. [15] Lithium-ion batteries are expensive and toxic when discarded. Saltwater batteries do not contain heavy metals and can be recycled easily. However, they are relatively untested and not currently manufactured.

8. Huge solar arrays require huge battery electric storage systems (BESS). A $150 million battery storage system can provide 100 MW for, at most, one hour and eighteen minutes. This cannot replace large-scale delivery of electricity. Then, since BESS lithium-ion batteries must be kept cool in summer and warm in winter, they need large heating, ventilation, air conditioning (HVAC) systems. (If the Li-ion battery overheats, the results are catastrophic.) Further, like other batteries, they lose their storage capacity over time and must be replaced—resulting in more extraction, energy and water use, and toxic waste. [16]

9. Solar PV systems cannot sufficiently power energy guzzlers like data centers, access networks, smelters, factories or electric vehicle [EV] charging stations. If French drivers shifted entirely to EVs, the country’s electricity demands would double. To produce this much electricity with low-carbon emissions, new nuclear plants would be the only option. [17] In 2007, Google boldly aimed to develop renewable energy that would generate electricity more cheaply than coal-fired plants can in order to “stave off catastrophic climate change.” Google shut down this initiative in 2011 when their engineers realized that “even if Google and others had led the way toward a wholesale adaptation of renewable energy, that switch would not have resulted in significant reductions of carbon dioxide emissions…. Worldwide, there is no level of investment in renewables that could prevent global warming.” [18]

10. Solar arrays impact farming. When we cover land with solar arrays and wind turbines, we lose plants that can feed us and sequester carbon. [19]

11. Solar PV systems’ inverters “chop” current and cause “dirty” power, which can impact residents’ health. [20]

12. At the end of their usable life, PV panels are hazardous waste. The toxic chemicals in solar panels include cadmium telluride, copper indium selenide, cadmium gallium (di)selenide, copper indium gallium (di)selenide, hexafluoroethane, lead, and polyvinyl fluoride. Silicon tetrachloride, a byproduct of producing crystalline silicon, is also highly toxic. In 2016, The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) estimated that the world had 250,000 metric tons of solar panel waste that year; and by 2050, the amount could reach 78 million metric tons. The Electric Power Research Institute recommends not disposing of solar panels in regular landfills: if modules break, their toxic materials could leach into soil. [21] In short, solar panels do not biodegrade and are difficult to recycle.

To make solar cells more recyclable, Belgian researchers recommend replacing silver contacts with copper ones, reducing the silicon wafers’ (and panels’) thickness, and removing lead from the panels’ electrical connections. [22]

Aerial view of a solar farm. Photo credit: Dsink000

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

13. Solar farms warm the Earth’s atmosphere.
Only 15% of sunlight absorbed by solar panels becomes electricity; 85% returns to the environment as heat. Re-emitted heat from large-scale solar farms affects regional and global temperatures. Scientists’ modeling shows that covering 20% of the Sahara with solar farms (to power Europe) would raise local desert temperatures by 1.5°C (2.7°F). By covering 50% of the Sahara, the desert’s temperature would increase by 2.5°C (4.5°F). Global temperatures would increase as much as 0.39°C—with polar regions warming more than the tropics, increasing loss of Arctic Sea ice. [23] As governments create “green new deals,” how should they use this modeling?

Other areas need consideration here: dust and dirt that accumulate on panels decreases their efficiency; washing them uses water that might otherwise go to farming. Further, Saharan dust, transported by wind, provides vital nutrients to the Amazon’s plants and the Atlantic Ocean. Solar farms on the Sahara could have other global consequences. [24]

14. Solar PV users may believe that they generate “zero-emitting,” “clean” power without awareness of the GHGs, extractions, smelting, chemicals and cargo shipping involved in manufacturing such systems—or the impacts of their disposal. If our only hope is to live with much less human impact to ecosystems, then how could we decrease solar PVs’ impacts? Could we stop calling solar PV power systems “green” and “carbon-neutral?” If not, why not?


Katie Singer’s writing about nature and technology is available at www.OurWeb.tech/letters/. Her most recent book is An Electronic Silent Spring.

REFERENCES

1. Schwarzburger, Heiko, “The trouble with silicon,” PV Magazine, September 15, 2010.

2. Troszak, Thomas A., “Why do we burn coal and trees to make solar panels?” August, 2019.  https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335083312_Why_do_we_burn_coal_and_trees_to_make_solar_panels

3. Kato, Kazuhiko, et. al., “Energy Pay-back Time and Life-cycle CO2 Emission of Residential PV Power System with Silicon PV Module,” Progress in Photovoltaics: Research and Applications, John Wiley & Sons, 1998.

4. Gibbs, Jeff and Michael Moore, “Planet of the Humans,” 2019 documentary about the ecological impacts and money behind “renewable” power systems, including solar, wind and biomass. www.planetofthehumans.com

5. New York State Dept. of Environmental Conservation – Facility DEC ID: 9291100078 PERMIT Issued to: Global Metallurgical Inc.; http://www.dec.ny.gov/dardata/boss/afs/permits/929110007800009_r3.pdf  

6. https://www.epa.gov/pfas/basic-information-pfas; https://www.niehs.nih.gov/health/topics/agents/pfc/index.cfm
https://www.medpagetoday.com/publichealthpolicy/environmentalhealth/84009
Way, Dan, “Policymakers demand answers about GenX-like compounds in solar panels,” CJ Exclusives, July 16, 2018. https://www.carolinajournal.com/news-article/policymakers-largely-unaware-of-genx-like-compounds-in-solar-panels/
“Solar panels could be a source of GenX and other perfluorinated contaminants,” NSJ Staff News, Feb. 16, 2018.  https://nsjonline.com/article/2018/02/solar-panels-could-be-a-source-of-genx-and-other-perflourinated-contaminants/
Lerner, Sharon, “The Teflon Toxin,” The Intercept, Aug. 17, 2015. About PFOAs, hazardous chemicals used in Teflon coating and on solar panels and found in 97% of peoples’ bodies.
Lim, Xiao Zhi “The Fluorine Detectives,” Nature, Feb. 13, 2019. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-fluorine-detectives/  

7. Rich, Nathaniel, “The Lawyer Who Became DuPont’s Worst Nightmare,” January 6, 2016. About attorney Robert Bilott’s twenty-year battle against DuPont for contaminating a West Virginia town with unregulated PFOAs. See also Todd Haynes film, “Dark Waters,” 2019.

8. https://www.wired.com/story/solar-panels-are-starting-to-die-leaving-behind-toxic-trash/
Hodgson, Sam, “Solar panel makers grapple with hazardous waste problem,” Associated Press, Feb. 11, 2013; https://business.financialpost.com/commodities/energy/solar-panel-makers-grapple-with-hazardous-waste-problem

9. Egri, Adam, Bruce A. Robertson, et al., “Reducing the Maladaptive Attractiveness of Solar Panels to Polarotactic Insects,” Conservation Biology, April, 2010.

10. “Exhibit E to Nevada Assembly Committee on Labor,” Submitted by Shawn M. Elicegui, May 20, 2025, on behalf of NV Energy.

11. https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-solar-batteries-renewable-energy-california-20190605-story.html “California has too much solar power. That might be good for ratepayers,” Sammy Roth, LA Times, June 5, 2019. https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-california-utilities-are-managing-excess-solar-power-1488628803, “How California Utilities Are Managing Excess Solar Power,” Cassandra Sweet, Wall Street Journal, March 4, 2017.
12 Jancovici: Audition Assemblée Nationale: Impact des EnR – 16 Mai 2019.  https://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/dyn/opendata/CRCANR5L15S2019PO762821N030.html. See also video with slides: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hr9VlAM71O0&t=1560s; minutes 45:20-48:30.

13 https://jancovici.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Jancovici_Mines_ParisTech_cours_7.pdf (slides 18 -19)

14  UNICEF and Pure Earth, “A third of the world’s children poisoned by lead,” 29 July 2020. https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/third-worlds-children-poisoned-lead-new-groundbreaking-analysis-says

15. Katwala, Amit, “The spiraling environmental cost of our lithium battery addiction,” 8.5.18; https://www.wired.co.uk/article/lithium-batteries-environment-impact. Choi, Hye-Bin, et al., “The impact of anthropogenic inputs on lithium content in river and tap water,” Nature Communications, 2019.

16. Martin, Calvin Luther, “BESS Bombs: The huge explosive toxic batteries the wind& solar companies are sneaking into your backyard, Parts 1 and 2,” Aug. 28, 2019.  https://rivercitymalone.com/win-solar-energy/bess-bombs-part-1/
https://rivercitymalone.com/win-solar-energy/bess-bombs-part-2/

17. https://jancovici.com/transition-energetique/transports/la-voiture-electrique-est-elle-la-solution-aux-problemes-de-pollution-automobile/

18. https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/what-it-would-really-take-to-reverse-climate-change.

19. Carroll, Mike, N.C. Cooperative Extension, Craven County Center, updated 2020. “Considerations for Transferring Agricultural Land to Solar Panel Energy Production.”  https://craven.ces.ncsu.edu/considerations-for-transferring-agricultural-land-to-solar-panel-energy-production/

20. Segell, Michael, “Is Dirty Electricity Making You Sick?” Prevention Magazine, Jan. 2009.

21.https://fee.org/articles/solar-panels-produce-tons-of-toxic-waste-literally/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/05/23/if-solar-panels-are-so-clean-why-do-they-produce-so-much-toxic-waste/?sh=14e584e0121c

22. O’Sullivan, Barry, “Are Your Solar Panels Recyclable?” 9 Feb. 2015.

23. Lu, Zhengyao and Benjamin Smith, “Solar panels in Sahara could boost renewable energy but damage the global climate—here’s why,” TheConversation.com, Feb. 11, 2021. https://theconversation.com/solar-panels-in-sahara-could-boost-renewable-energy-but-damage-the-global-climate-heres-why-153992

24. Gray, Ellen, “NASA Satellite Reveals How Much Saharan Dust Feeds Amazon’s Plants,” Feb. 22, 2015. https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/nasa-satellite-reveals-how-much-saharan-dust-feeds-amazon-s-plants

The Long Shadow of the Tar Sands: Lithium Mining and Tar Sands Sulfur [Dispatches from Thacker Pass]

The Long Shadow of the Tar Sands: Lithium Mining and Tar Sands Sulfur [Dispatches from Thacker Pass]

In this article, Max Wilbert talks about his experience in fighting tar sand mining in Washington and Utah, and how this is related to the current campaign against lithium mining in Nevada. “I think it’s wrong to blow up a mountain for tar sands. I think it’s wrong to blow up a mountain for lithium, too. I guess I’m just stubborn like that.”


by Max Wilbert

It’s often said that solar panels, wind turbines, and the lithium-ion batteries that store their energy and power electric vehicles will save the planet.

What most people don’t know is that producing lithium has direct links to the Alberta Tar Sands (also known as the Athabasca tar sands), the largest and most destructive industrial project on the planet.

This is a personal issue for me. I have fought the tar sands for over a decade. Starting in 2010, I began campaigning for the city of Bellingham, Washington to forbid a spur of the Trans Mountain pipeline which carries “dilbit” (diluted bitumen, AKA unrefined tar sands to which gas has been added so it’ll flow easily through a pipeline) under the city.

After months of campaigning, Bellingham became the first city in the nation to unanimously pass a resolution declaring tar sands fuel to be harmful. But despite overwhelming public opposition, the city’s attorneys said they couldn’t prevent the pipeline from operating using the law. What that says about the state of democracy is worth a whole different article. And perhaps a revolution. But I digress.

After my years in Bellingham, I lived in Salt Lake City, where I took part in the campaign to protect the Tavaputs Plateau in northeastern Utah from tar sands strip mining. As part of that work, I took part in public meetings, family camp-outs on the site, disruptive protests, and several direct actions against the U.S. Oil Sands Corporation.

For the last three months, I’ve been in Nevada, on Northern Paiute territory, holding down a protest camp established on the proposed site of an open-pit lithium mine. I’m an equal opportunity land defender. I think it’s wrong to blow up a mountain for tar sands. I think it’s wrong to blow up a mountain for lithium, too. I guess I’m just stubborn like that.

But as I’ve implied, these projects are directly related. It turns out, the proposed mine at Thacker Pass would likely rely directly on materials sourced from the Alberta tar sands as the key chemical ingredient in their production process.

According to the Final Environmental Impact Statement, the proposed Thacker Pass mine would produce 5,800 tons of sulfuric acid per day for use in refining lithium. That would require importing 1,896 tons of sulfur per day. That’s nearly 700,000 tons per year, roughly equivalent to the mass of two Empire State Buildings annually. This would be brought in to Thacker Pass on dozens of (diesel-fueled) semi-trucks each carrying 3,800 gallons of molten sulfur.

Most sulfur comes from oil and gas refineries, where it’s a byproduct of producing low-sulfur fuels to meet air-quality regulations. And here’s the punchline: according the U.S. Geological Survey, tar sands contain 11 times as much sulfur as conventional heavy crude oil. There are literal “mountains” of sulfur piling up in Alberta, and at other refineries which process tar sands fuel.

That includes the refineries in Anacortes, Washington, which refines the “dilbit” from the pipelines running underneath Bellingham, my old home. These two refineries are major sources of sulfur for the entire western United States, shipping out millions of tons annually.

According to Lithium Americas Corp. Vice President of Global Engineering, the proposed lithium mine at Thacker Pass would purchase sulfur on the bulk commodity market, and it would be delivered by rail to Winnemucca (60 miles south), then brought by truck to Thacker Pass. That bulk commodity market sources nearly 100% of its elemental sulfur from oil and gas refineries.

And so we come full circle: the lithium destined for lithium-ion batteries that will be extracted from Thacker Pass, will almost certainly be directly connected to the total destruction of Alberta’s boreal forest, the poisoning of the water across thousands of square miles, the epidemic of cancers and rare diseases in that region, the wave of missing and murdered indigenous women in Alberta, and all the other harms that come from the tar sands. And, lest we forget, the tar sands are a major contributor to global warming. Canadian greenhouse gas emissions have skyrocketed over recent decades, as tar sands oil production has expanded.

Revenue from sales of sulfur is not unimportant to the economics of tar sands oil extraction. One report from 2018 found that as much as half a million barrels per day of tar sands product would be economical to extract if legal levels of sulfur allowed in bunker fuel were lowered. Another report found that “developing a plan for storing, selling or disposing of the sulphur will help to ensure the profitability of oil sands operations.”

All this points to a relatively simple conclusion: extraction of lithium at Thacker Pass would directly support the economics of extracting additional sulfur-rich crude oil and bitumen at the tar sands, further incentivizing the destruction of the planet.

Why do we defend the land here at Thacker Pass? There are so many reasons. It is important habitat. It is sacred ancestral land for our Northern Paiute friends from the nearby Fort McDermitt tribe. It is beautiful. But we also stand to protect this place because we stand for the truth. Lithium mining, and by extension, much of the so-called “green economy” that is being developed is not separate from fossil fuels. It is firmly dependent on fossil fuels.

Besides the sulfur, this project would burn tens of thousands of gallons of diesel fuel per day — operating heavy equipment made of steel that was produced with metallurgical coke, a type of coal. That same steel makes up the frame of the electric cars, too. The roads into the mine site would likely be made of asphalt concrete. You know what another name for asphalt is? Bitumen. AKA tar sands.

The idea of a “green” electric car is a fantasy. The sooner we face that reality, the sooner we can put a stop to false greenwashing projects like the Lithium Americas/Lithium Nevada Thacker Pass mine. The sooner we face reality, the sooner we can recognize that 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.

Do not fool yourself. This is not some great green transition. It is more of the same. More destroyed land, more poisoned water, more decimated wildlife.

It’s beautiful here at Thacker Pass. Yesterday morning, I woke before 5am to visit the Greater sage-grouse “lek” — mating ground — on top of the mountain directly above the proposed mine. I watched the male grouse strut and dance, and thought about the new USGS report showing that grouse populations have declined by 80% since 1965, and nearly 40% since 2002. That comes on top of previous population collapses. The population was 16 million a century ago. Now, it’s closer to 200,000. That’s a 99% decline. This region, the northwestern Great Basin, has been particularly hard hit.

It is possible for humans to live sustainably. Our ancestors managed it for hundreds of thousands of years. Is it possible to live sustainably, and drive cars? No, I don’t believe it is. You may not like it, but there’s a thing about the natural laws of the universe: they don’t give a damn if you like them or not. Gravity exists. Ecological constraints exist. If you ignore them, you will pay the price.

We cannot afford to ignore the truth, and because of this, we must stop the Thacker Pass mine — and the tar sands. We need your help. If you can contribute to this campaign, or to the broader transformation of society that is needed, reach out to us at https://ProtectThackerPass.org. Construction might begin very soon. If that happens, Thacker Pass will die. The water will be poisoned. And the truth will be crushed along with the sagebrush, under the hard metal treads of the bulldozers. Stand with us.

#ProtectThackerPass #BrightGreenLies #TarSands #Greenwashing #Lithium #EVs #EnergyStorage #KeepItInTheGround

Photo: Large sulfur pile — byproduct of tar sands oil refining. By Leonard G., Creative Commons ShareAlike 1.0.