A few years ago, when you saw a security camera, you may have thought that the video feed went to a VCR somewhere in a back office that could only be accessed when a crime occurs. Or maybe you imagined a sleepy guard who only paid half-attention, and only when they discovered a crime in progress. In the age of internet-connectivity, now it’s easy to imagine footage sitting on a server somewhere, with any image inaccessible except to someone willing to fast forward through hundreds of hours of footage.
That may be how it worked in 1990s heist movies, and it may be how a homeowner still sorts through their own home security camera footage. But that’s not how cameras operate in today’s security environment. Instead, advanced algorithms are watching every frame on every camera and documenting every person, animal, vehicle, and backpack as they move through physical space, and thus camera to camera, over an extended period of time.
The term “video analytics” seems boring, but don’t confuse it with how many views you got on your YouTube “how to poach an egg” tutorial. In a law enforcement or private security context, video analytics refers to using machine learning, artificial intelligence, and computer vision to automate ubiquitous surveillance.
Through the Atlas of Surveillance project, EFF has found more than 35 law enforcement agencies that use advanced video analytics technology. That number is steadily growing as we discover new vendors, contracts, and capabilities. To better understand how this software works, who uses it, and what it’s capable of, EFF has acquired a number of user manuals. And yes, they are even scarier than we thought.
Briefcam, which is often packaged with Genetec video technology, is frequently used at real-time crime centers. These are police surveillance facilities that aggregate camera footage and other surveillance information from across a jurisdiction. Dozens of police departments use Briefcam to search through hours of footage from multiple cameras in order to, for instance, narrow in on a particular face or a specific colored backpack. This power of video analytic software would be particularly scary if used to identify people out practicing their First Amendment right to protest.
Avigilon systems are a bit more opaque, since they are often sold to business, which aren’t subject to the same transparency laws. In San Francisco, for instance, Avigilon provides the cameras and software for at least six business improvement districts (BIDs) and Community Benefit Districts (CBDs). These districts blanket neighborhoods in surveillance cameras and relay the footage back to a central control room. Avigilon’s video analytics can undertake object identification (such as whether things are cars and people), license plate reading, and potentially face recognition.
You can read the Avigilon user manual here, and the Briefcam manual here. The latter was obtained through the California Public Records Act by Dylan Kubeny, a student journalist at the University of Nevada, Reno Reynolds School of Journalism.
But what exactly are these software systems’ capabilities? Here’s what we learned:
Pick a Face, Track a Face, Rate a Face
If you’re watching video footage on Briefcam, you can select any face, then add it to a “watchlist.” Then, with a few more clicks, you can retrieve every piece of video you have with that person’s face in it.
Briefcam assigns all face images 1-3 stars. One star: the AI can’t even recognize it as a person. Two stars: medium confidence. Three stars: high confidence.
Detection of Unusual Events
Avigilon has a pair of algorithms that it uses to predict what it calls “unusual events.”
The first can detect “unusual motions,” essentially patterns of pixels that don’t match what you’d normally expect in the scene. It takes two weeks to train this self-learning algorithm. The second can detect “unusual activity” involving cars and people. It only takes a week to train.
Also, there’s “Tampering Detection” which, depending on how you set it, can be triggered by a moving shadow:
Enter a value between 1-10 to select how sensitive a camera is to tampering Events. Tampering is a sudden change in the camera field of view, usually caused by someone unexpectedly moving the camera. Lower the setting if small changes in the scene, like moving shadows, cause tampering events. If the camera is installed indoors and the scene is unlikely to change, you can increase the setting to capture more unusual events.
Pink Hair and Short Sleeves
With Briefcam’s shade filter, a person searching a crowd could filter by the color and length of items of clothing, accessories, or even hair. Briefcam’s manual even states the program can search a crowd or a large collection of footage for someone with pink hair.
In addition, users of BriefCam can search specifically by what a person is wearing and other “personal attributes.” Law enforcement attempting to sift through crowd footage or hours of video could search for someone by specifying blue jeans or a yellow short-sleeved shirt.
Man, Woman, Child, Animal
BriefCam sorts people and objects into specific categories to make them easier for the system to search for. BriefCam breaks people into the three categories of “man,” “woman,” and “child.” Scientific studies show that this type of categorization can misidentify gender nonconforming, nonbinary, trans, and disabled people whose bodies may not conform to the rigid criteria the software looks for when sorting people. Such misidentification can have real-world harms, like triggering misguided investigations or denying access.
The software also breaks down other categories, including distinguishing between different types of vehicles and recognizing animals.
Proximity Alert
In addition to monitoring the total number of objects in a frame or the relative size of objects, BriefCam can detect proximity between people and the duration of their contact. This might make BriefCam a prime candidate for “COVID-19 washing,” or rebranding invasive surveillance technology as a potential solution to the current public health crisis.
Avigilon also claims it can detect skin temperature, raising another possible assertion of public health benefit. But, as we’ve argued before, remote thermal imaging can often be very inaccurate, and fail to detect virus carriers that are asymptomatic.
Public health is a collective effort. Deploying invasive surveillance technologies that could easily be used to monitor protestors and track political figures is likely to breed more distrust of the government. This will make public health collaboration less likely, not more.
Watchlists
One feature available both with Briefcam and Avigilon are watchlists, and we don’t mean a notebook full of names. Instead, the systems allow you to upload folders of faces and spreadsheets of license plates, and then the algorithm will find matches and track the targets’ movement. The underlying watchlists can be extremely problematic. For example, EFF has looked at hundreds of policy documents for automated license plate readers (ALPRs) and it is very rare for an agency to describe the rules for adding someone to a watchlist.
Vehicles Worldwide
Often, ALPRs are associated with England, the birthplace of the technology, and the United States, where it has metastasized. But Avigilon already has its sights set on new markets and has programmed its technology to identify license plates across six continents.
It’s worth noting that Avigilon is owned by Motorola Solutions, the same company that operates the infamous ALPR provider Vigilant Solutions.
Conclusion
We’re heading into a dangerous time. The lack of oversight of police acquisition and use of surveillance technology has dangerous consequences for those misidentified or caught up in the self-fulfilling prophecies of AI policing.
In fact, Dr. Rashall Brackney, the Charlottesville Police Chief, described these video analytics as perpetuating racial bias at a recent panel. Video analytics “are often incorrect,” she said. “Over and over they create false positives in identifying suspects.”
This new era of video analytics capabilities causes at least two problems. First, police could rely more and more on this secretive technology to dictate who to investigate and arrest by, for instance, identifying the wrong hooded and backpacked suspect. Second, people who attend political or religious gatherings will justifiably fear being identified, tracked, and punished.
Over a dozen cities across the United States have banned government use of face recognition, and that’s a great start. But this only goes so far. Surveillance companies are already planning ways to get around these bans by using other types of video analytic tools to identify people. Now is the time to push for more comprehensive legislation to defend our civil liberties and hold police accountable.
To learn more about Real-Time Crime Centers, read our latest report here.
“We do not want those whose first impulse is to compromise. We want no straddlers, for, in the past, they have surrendered too much good wilderness and primeval areas which should never have been lost.“
Mr. Wuerthner provides a long list of key conservation victories, including the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), Yellowstone, Grand Teton, and Olympic National Park – all of which were protected because heroic people refused to compromise. He cites notable failures, as well, writing:
“Pragmatists, in the end, leave messes for future generations to clean up. Capitulating to local interests with half-baked compromises in the interest of expediency typically produces uneven results. Either they do not adequately protect the land or create enormous headaches for future conservationists to undue often at a significant political and economic expense.“
The National Forests system was originally set up by President Theodore Roosevelt to protect forests from commercial activity – not log them. Compromises made by Gifford Pinchot, the first Chief of the Forest Service, resulted in mining companies (and later timber companies) gaining access to our National Forests. In the early 1900’s, almost no one could imagine that the seemingly limitless supply of virgin timber on private lands would one day be exhausted. They could not conceive that in a few generations’ time, timber companies and their partners in government agencies would be fighting tooth and nail to log the dwindling amount of old growth in our national forests – our collective natural heritage.
Lessons for the Elliott Mr. Wuerthner’s impassioned writing has left me wondering what lessons future generations will glean from the current process surrounding the Elliott State Forest (likely to be handed over to OSU with their timber-centric “research design” in the coming weeks). How will they see the unusually short public outreach/comment period and the rush to complete the OSU plan in time for the Land Board’s approval? How will they judge our mainstream environmental groups who seem afraid to openly criticize the egregious shortcomings of the plan and process? Will future Oregonians accept that compromise was the best we could hope for with the Elliott State Forest?
Insight from the Advisory Committee: In a recent email, Bob Sallinger (Portland Audubon member serving on the Advisory Committee) clarified the current situation with OSU’s draft plan for the Elliott:
“The draft plan calls for cutting up to 3287 acres of mature forest (between 65 and 152 years of age) over a period of a couple or two decades using selective harvest (20%-80% retention). Several hundred acres within this 3287 acres are on the younger side (65-100 years old) but the majority is in 100-152 year range…
I don’t think there is anybody in the conservation community that thinks it is a good idea to cut these older stands or that the research benefits outweigh the benefits of preserving 100% of the older stands…Ultimately the question the conservation community will need to decide is whether they can live with the tradeoffs in this plan…
Pretty much 100% of the changes and concessions over the past year have been made to address conservation concerns. Despite that fact, if conservation interests sign-off, it looks like we will have consensus among all stakeholders including tribes, timber, counties, hunters and rec, and schools…
So bottom line is that there are definitely tradeoffs in this plan. There would be under any management scenario. In a perfect world we would lock up the entire Elliott as a carbon/ biodiversity reserve. However the same issues that have necessitated a decades long battle over the Elliott are still in play today.
Folks will have to decide whether the inclusion of things like clearcuts in about 14,000 acres of existing plantations (under 65 years of age) or selective harvest in a limited number of stands >65 are deal breakers or not. In doing so, I would encourage folks to think carefully about the other pathways that are available to us.“
I have great respect for Bob. He has been a true conservation hero on the Advisory Committee. But the 12-member committee was compromised at the outset by the inclusion of hardliners with vested economic interests (Douglas County Commissioner Chris Boice is a great example). When Bob writes about the need to live with tradeoffs and reach consensus among all stakeholders, I wonder what happened to the broader group of stakeholders – the citizens of Oregon. I also wonder why experts in forest ecology and carbon were not included on the committee – while timber interests were.
When it comes to the fate of the Elliott, surveys show Oregonians overwhelmingly support conservation. When I see DSL and the Land Board showing such great deference to OSU, I wonder, “Where’s the deference to Oregonians?” When it comes to this state forest, one ought to defer to the citizens of this state. And when it comes to compromise and tradeoffs, one has only to look at the millions of acres of clearcuts in our state and federal forests to understand that we’ve already compromised our natural heritage.
Pictures Tell the Story: OSU’s latest draft plan for the Elliott State Research Forest (ESRF) is an unwieldy mix of contradictions, obfuscation, and technical jargon put together by folks who clearly are not adept at communicating with a broader audience. When it comes to understanding this fundamental issue of compromise in the Elliott, pictures are the key.
The map below shows the locations of older trees (indicated by darker shades of green) in the Elliott State Forest. It is important to note that significant quantities of older trees are scattered across vast stretches of the Forest.
Tree age classes in the Elliott State Forest (darker = older)
This next map shows the habitat of threatened birds (marbled murrelet in red and northern spotted owls in blue) in the Elliott. Predictably, the habitat is closely aligned with the older stands.
Habitat for threatened birds in the Elliott State Forest
This final map shows how the OSU would divide the forest. The purple areas (denoted as “CRW”) would be “conservation research watersheds”, with limited logging allowed. The dark green areas (labeled as “MRW Reserve”) will be subject to experimental treatments (= logging) in the coming decades. The orange areas (labeled “Extensive”) will undergo thinning in which 20-80% of the trees are to be cut (including thousands of acres of older trees). The light green areas (labeled “Intensive”) are composed of trees less than 65 years of age, and will be subject to clearcutting.
OSU’s research design for the Elliott would perpetuate clearcutting or fragmentation in well over half the forest (conservation reserves shown in purple)
Viewed from the perspective of older trees and habit for our threatened birds, OSU’s plan for the Elliott is a complete disconnect. As the maps clearly show, it would sacrifice a majority of the Forest to continued clearcutting and fragmentation.
George Wuerthner’s eloquent words could not be more applicable to the Elliott:
“In far too many cases, there is a tendency to believe that it is necessary to appease local interests typically by agreeing to weakened protections or resource giveaways to garner the required political support for a successful conservation effort. However, this fails to consider that in nearly all cases where effective protective measures are enacted, it has been done over almost uniform local opposition.
In those instances where local opposition to a conservation measure is mild or does not exist, it probably means the proposal will be ineffective or worse—even set real conservation backward…Nevertheless, many environmentalists now believe that due to regional parochialism and lack of historical context, significant compromises are necessary to win approval for new conservation initiatives.“
The Elliott State Forest has already been heavily compromised – OSU’s plan would perpetuate the mistakes of the past.
The essence of OSU’s plan for the Elliott – the area on the west side would be protected, the area to the east would face continued fragmentation via a complicated matrix of “forest management” (including ~14,000 acres of clearcutting).
Indigenous teachings are thousands of years old. People born into these traditions are raised into knowledge that those born outside do not—and should not—have. Do not steal from others traditions. Instead, research your own family history and connect to your own roots.
This award-winning documentary deals with the popularization and commercialization of Native American spiritual traditions by Non-Indians.
Important questions are asked of those seeking to commercially exploit Tribal rituals and copy sacred ceremonies and those vested with safeguarding sacred ways. The film represents a wide range of voices from Native communities, and speaks to issues of cultural appropriation with humour, righteous anger, and thoughtful insight.
Written by Daniel Hart Youtube copyright notice : “Alice Di Micele-Not For Sale (24:16)”, sound recording administered by: CD Baby
“You cannot live a political life, you cannot live a moral life if you’re not willing to open your eyes and see the world more clearly. See some of the injustice that’s going on. Try to make yourself aware of what’s happening in the world. And when you are aware, you have a responsibility to act.”
—Bill Ayers, cofounder of the Weather Underground.
A black tern weighs barely two ounces. On energy reserves less than a small bag of M&M’s and wings that stretch to cover twelve inches, she flies thousands of miles, searching for the wetlands that will harbor her young. Every year the journey gets longer as the wetlands are desiccated for human demands. Every year the tern, desperate and hungry, loses, while civilization, endless and sanguineous, wins.
A polar bear should weigh 650 pounds. Her energy reserves are meant to see her through nine long months of dark, denned gestation, and then lactation, when she will give up her dwindling stores to the needy mouths of her species’ future. But in some areas, the female’s weight before hibernation has already dropped from 650 to 507 pounds. Meanwhile, the ice has evaporated like the wetlands. When she wakes, the waters will stretch impassably open, and there is no Abrahamic god of bears to part them for her.
The Aldabra snail should weigh something, but all that’s left to weigh are skeletons, bits of orange and indigo shells. The snail has been declared not just extinct, but the first casualty of global warming. In dry periods, the snail hibernated. The young of any species are always more vulnerable, as they have no reserves from which to draw. In this case, the adults’ “reproductive success” was a “complete failure.” In plain terms, the babies died and kept dying, and a species millions of years old is now a pile of shell fragments.
What is your personal carrying capacity for grief, rage, despair?
We are living in a period of mass extinction. The numbers stand at 200 species a day. That’s 73,000 a year. This culture is oblivious to their passing, feels entitled to their every last niche, and there is no roll call on the nightly news.
There is a name for the tsunami wave of extermination: the Holocene extinction event. There’s no asteroid this time, only human behavior, behavior that we could choose to stop. Adolph Eichman’s excuse was that no one told him that the concentration camps were wrong. We’ve all seen the pictures of the drowning polar bears. Are we so ethically numb that we need to be told this is wrong?
There are voices raised in concern, even anguish, at the plight of the earth, the rending of its species. “Only zero emissions can prevent a warmer planet,” one pair of climatologists declare. James Lovelock, originator of the Gaia hypothesis, states bluntly that global warming has passed the tipping point, carbon offsetting is a joke, and “individual lifestyle adjustments” are “a deluded fantasy.” It’s all true, and self-evident.
“Simple living” should start with simple observation: if burning fossil fuels will kill the planet, then stop burning them.
But that conclusion, in all its stark clarity, is not the popular one to draw. The moment policy makers and environmental groups start offering solutions is the exact moment when they stop telling the truth, inconvenient or otherwise. Google “global warming solutions.” The first paid sponsor, Campaign Earth, urges “No doom and gloom!! When was the last time depression got you really motivated? We’re here to inspire realistic action steps and stories of success.” By “realistic” they don’t mean solutions that actually match the scale of the problem. They mean the usual consumer choices—cloth shopping bags, travel mugs, and misguided dietary advice—which will do exactly nothing to disrupt the troika of industrialization, capitalism, and patriarchy that is skinning the planet alive.
As Derrick has pointed out elsewhere, even if every American took every single action suggested by Al Gore it would only reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 21 percent. Aric tells a stark truth: even if through simple living and rigorous recycling you stopped your own average American’s annual one ton of garbage production, “your per capita share of the industrial waste produced in the US is still almost twenty-six tons. That’s thirty-seven times as much waste as you were able to save by eliminating a full 100 percent of your personal waste.”
Industrialism itself is what has to stop.
There is no kinder, greener version that will do the trick of leaving us a living planet. In blunt terms, industrialization is a process of taking entire communities of living beings and turning them into commodities and dead zones. Could it be done more “efficiently”? Sure, we could use a little less fossil fuels, but it still ends in the same wastelands of land, water, and sky. We could stretch this endgame out another twenty years, but the planet still dies. Trace every industrial artifact back to its source—which isn’t hard, as they all leave trails of blood—and you find the same devastation: mining, clear-cuts, dams, agriculture. And now tar sands, mountaintop removal, wind farms (which might better be called dead bird and bat farms).
No amount of renewables is going to make up for the fossil fuels or change the nature of the extraction, both of which are prerequisites for this way of life. Neither fossil fuels nor extracted substances will ever be sustainable; by definition, they will run out. Bringing a cloth shopping bag to the store, even if you walk there in your Global Warming Flip-Flops, will not stop the tar sands. But since these actions also won’t disrupt anyone’s life, they’re declared both realistic and successful.
The next site’s Take Action page includes the usual: buying light bulbs, inflating tires, filling dishwashers, shortening showers, and rearranging the deck chairs. It also offers the ever-crucial Global Warming Bracelets and, more importantly, Flip-Flops. Polar bears everywhere are weeping with relief.
The first noncommercial site is the Union of Concerned Scientists. As one might expect, there are no exclamation points, but instead a statement that “[t]he burning of fossil fuel (oil, coal, and natural gas) alone counts for about 75 percent of annual CO2 emissions.” This is followed by a list of Five Sensible Steps. Step One? No, not stop burning fossil fuels—“Make Better Cars and SUVs.” Never mind that the automobile itself is the pollution, with its demands—for space, for speed, for fuel—in complete opposition to the needs of both a viable human community and a living planet. Like all the others, the scientists refuse to call industrial civilization into question. We can have a living planet and the consumption that’s killing the planet, can’t we?
The principle here is very simple.
As Derrick has written, “[A]ny social system based on the use of nonrenewable resources is by definition unsustainable.” Just to be clear, nonrenewable means it will eventually run out. Once you’ve grasped that intellectual complexity, you can move on to the next level. “Any culture based on the nonrenewable use of renewable resources is just as unsustainable.” Trees are renewable. But if we use them faster than they can grow, the forest will turn to desert. Which is precisely what civilization has been doing for its 10,000 year campaign, running through soil, rivers, and forests as well as metal, coal, and oil. Now the oceans are almost dead and their plankton populations are collapsing, populations that both feed the life of the oceans and create oxygen for the planet.
What will we fill our lungs with when they are gone? The plastics with which industrial civilization is replacing them? In parts of the Pacific, plastic outweighs plankton 48 to 1. Imagine if it were your blood, your heart, crammed with toxic materials—not just chemicals, but physical gunk—until there was ten times more of it than you. What metaphor is adequate for the dying plankton? Cancer? Suffocation? Crucifixion?
But the oceans don’t need our metaphors. They need action. They need industrial civilization to stop destroying and devouring. In other words, they need us to make it stop.
Which is why we are writing this book.
THE DEEP GREEN RESISTANCE BOOK
Strategy to Save the Planet:
The women of Kendeng set their feet in cement to stop a mine in their lands. This is their story.
This article was written by Febriana Firdaus on 13 November 2020 and published originally on Mongabay.
Across Indonesia, hundreds of communities are in conflict with companies seeking control of their resources. In some cases, the resistance has been led by women.
Journalist Febriana Firdaus traveled across the country to meet grassroots female activists and delve into the stories behind their struggles.
This article is part one of a series about her journey, which has also been made into a film, Our Mothers’ Land.
Serene, prosperous, fertile. These words come to mind as I stand at the top of a hill in Tegaldowo village, on the island of Java, in Indonesia, one Sunday evening in 2019. It is an idiom used to describe this giant island, with its rich soils, verdant rice paddies and teak forests. But the tranquility hides a more turbulent story.
Across Indonesia, the world’s third largest democracy, mass demonstrations have erupted. Some 3,000 kilometers (1,864 miles) to the east, anger at decades of mistreatment of indigenous Papuans has spilled over into violence. In the capital, Jakarta, students are taking to the streets in their thousands, protesting against a raft of new laws many fear will erode civil liberties.
Among the most contentious features of the new legislation is concern that it will enable the government to criminalize farmers and activists fighting against extractive companies taking their land. Already, hundreds of communities are locked in simmering conflicts with firms that have logged their forests, mined their mountains, and transformed their farmland into plantations. Many of these people once hoped that the president, Joko Widodo, would tip the scales in the favor of the powerless.
But in the coming months those hopes will be dashed. By November 2020, the government will sign into effect sweeping new legislation that appears to entrench the power of oligarchs, and of the private firms responsible for damaging the nation’s environment, including its vast rainforests.
For many communities engaged in the fight to protect land rights and the environment, the hills in which I stand hold huge resonance.
It is not just a hill, but a karst: a limestone formation that undergirds the North Kendeng Mountains and stretches 180 kilometers (112 miles) east to west. The rock has been eroded over time to form a giant warren of underground caves and rivers, providing clean water to the people of the region throughout the year.
The Indigenous people of Kendeng consider the karst to be their Ibu Bumi — their Mother Earth. She nurtures and even breastfeeds the land, in their lore, allowing them to grow rice and other crops.
“Mother Earth has given, Mother Earth has been hurt, Mother Earth will seek justice,” sings Sukinah, a farmer who accompanies me as she patiently checks the corn in the field that surrounds us. She moves nimbly, dressed in slippers and a traditional Javanese blouse called a kebaya.
In October, DGR conducted an on-the-ground fact finding mission to the sites of two proposed lithium mines in Nevada. In this article, we look at the facts regarding the plans Lithium Nevada company has for mining and processing lithium (mainly destined for making electric car batteries) in northern Nevada, at Thacker Pass.
The company, now with shares owned by a Chinese mining company, claim their open-pit strip-mine will be a “green mine.” Much of this material comes from Thacker Pass. Special thanks to Aimee Wild for collating this material.
Why Lithium?
Lithium is the lightest metal on the periodic table of the elements. It is cost effective. It is an excellent conductor. Lithium batteries power cell phones, laptops and now cars. The batteries are rechargeable and last longer than other batteries. Lithium is also used in heat-resistant glass, ceramics, aircraft metals, lubrication grease, air treatment systems and some pharmaceuticals.
Interest in the mining of lithium as an important commodity is soaring. Lithium is located in the earth’s crust, oceans, mineral springs and igneous rocks. To be able to extract it economically an area, concentrated lithium is needed, hence the interest in the Nevada site. Thousands and thousands of tons of lithium are extracted, processed, transported and utilized every year.
Thacker Pass Mine
Thacker Pass Mine is owned by Lithium Americas. They have a mining project in South America (The Cauchari-Olaroz Project) which is currently under construction, and of course in Nevada, the proposed Thacker Pass mine. Ganfeng (a chinese based mining company) is one of the largest shareholders of Lithium America. This increases the potential for mining and processing to be shipped overseas.
Local communities have struggled to get to the bottom of the plans for the mines. The brochures are complicated and convoluted. What is clear is that the local people have been chosen as a guinea pig. Most Lithium mines in South America involve pumping saltwater brine on barren salt flats where the lithium slowly floats to the top, is skimmed off, and is then purified for use in batteries.
In Australia they use spodumene ore, which is higher quality than the product Lithium Nevada plans to use. There are concerns linked to how the poorer quality lithium will be processed and the transport of chemicals into the processing areas. There are concerns regarding the transportation of refinery waste by rail cars, and shipping. The plans include transporting waste sulfur, by truck to the mine site, where it will be burned and converted to enormous quantities of Sulfuric Acid on a daily basis. Processing (burning) elemental sulfur, creates sulfur dioxide, sulfur trioxide and ultimately sulfuric acid—all of which are toxic and harmful to life.
Radioactive Waste?
There are concerns that the processing of lithium could ‘accidentally’ expose naturally-occurring uranium. Of course there have been promised by the company to ensure that any radioactive waste will be contained by a “liner.” This seems wholly inadequate when considering there is a water source nearby, and processing plants can have accidental fires or explosion. We know from global disasters (Fukoshima and Chernobyl) that the impact environmental disasters involving radioactive waste can devastate human and non-human communities. Transporting chemicals to or from processing plants increase the risk of accidents, and the smell of sulphur in nearby neighborhoods is likely to be overwhelming at times.
Clarity Needed On The Impact Of Thacker Pass Mine
Opposition to these plans are likely to strengthen when the public understand the plans and the potential impact, and when the information is not shrouded in convoluted documents. In short, the mines almost certainly will be destructive to water fowl, to any life in the rivers and lakes nearby, and impact on the water table.
The air quality is likely to reduce, and the storage and transportation of toxic chemicals increases non-intentional leakage/accidents. If understood correctly the plans to dispose of some waste include a tailing pond, which could contain a) toxic solids, b) harmful discharges c) could impact air quality, and d) could leach into ground water. The mining and processing of lithium is destructive to people, non-human life, the land, the water and the air.
Is It Carbon Neutral?
Burning sulfur does not create carbon, so in that respect the facts are correct. However, as with all green capitalist extraction plans this is a small percentage of the whole picture. The whole picture (or the fact based plans) are obscured with overly complex plans and emperors-new-clothes type scenarios. The process of burning sulfur creates harmful (toxic) chemicals and removes oxygen from the atmosphere.
A conservative estimate is that the processing plant will require over 10,000 gallons of diesel per day to run. In additional to this is the fuel needed to transport the sulfur from the refinery (yes; it comes from an oil refinery) to the mine site. You also have the fuel needed to transport the workers and the electricity needed to keep the plant functioning.
There are concerns that the lithium from this project could be shipped to China for processing in the future. Lithium Americas has been loaned substantial amounts of money from Ganfeng and Bangchak. The Chinese Mining company already own shares in Lithium Nevada and could intentionally own more rights if the loan is not paid back.
So, carbon neutral—no. Friendly to the environment—no. There is not much difference between mountaintop removal coal mining and mountaintop removal lithium mining. Both are exceptionally destructive.
You can read more about lithium mines here: www.portectthackerpass.org. Join our newsletter for more info on lithium mining and greenwashing.
Often, ALPRs are associated with England, the birthplace of the technology, and the United States, where it has metastasized. But Avigilon already has its sights set on new markets and has programmed its technology to identify license plates across six continents.
