Tuesday, June 18, 2019

Slow Clap Presents: Lithium and the White Gold Rush

Real Story.  Real Stupid.

"What links the battery in your smartphone with a dead yak floating down a Tibetan river?"
-Wired

Lithium-ion batteries were developed in 1991.  They are superior quality batteries that offer the ability to use clean energy from wind turbines, solar panels, hydroelectric dams and other sources of clean energy.  Lithium-ion batteries help reduce greenhouse emissions and could be the answer to a carbon-free future but at what cost?

Where does lithium come from?  Lithium is a soft silvery-white metal that is found in hot salty brine deep beneath the surface of the earth.  The salt and lithium form under deserts and prehistoric lake beds like Panamint Valley, near Death Valley in the Mojave Desert.  Much of the lithium we currently use comes from South America, from Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile.  

How is lithium processed?  The salty brine is pumped up to the surface where it is spread out in large drying ponds that separate the different elements.  This process in total takes between 18 months and 2 years.  After all of the evaporating and filtering, lithium carbonate is able to be extracted and made into a usable product.

What's wrong with lithium mining?  In South America, 65 percent of the drinking water is used in the lithium mining process.  This process requires 500,000 gallons of water to produce 1 ton of lithium.  The mining process can contaminate fresh water and can kill fish and other animals hundreds of miles away.  The mining is invasive and threatens the sensitive ecosystems of our planet.  This process exposes evaporated minerals to the air and it destroys the water table, pollutes the local wells as well as the earth.

Battery Mineral Resources, a company based in Australia, is seeking permission to drill 4 wells in Panamint Valley.  These 4 wells will cost 7 million dollars and could lead to a major mining operation in the future.  The Center for Biologic Diversity, The Sierra Club, and The Defenders of Wildlife claim that this will lead to a destruction of the beautiful panorama, disrupt the ecosystem and threaten wildlife like the desert tortoise, the Panamint alligator lizard, Nelson's bighorn sheep, as well as many other precious animals.

My two cents: I'm guilty of owning products with lithium-ion batteries as is everyone else.  I didn't know enough to consider where lithium batteries come from and how they are made.  The Wired article I read asked, "What links the battery in your smartphone with a dead yak floating down a Tibetan river?"  The answer, of course, is the lithium-ion battery.  

Rating:  I give the white gold rush for lithium 3 out of 5 possible slow claps.  While I realize that there is a need for lithium-ion batteries in our lives, I wonder how much is enough?  We already take so much for from the earth and it's never enough.  We are like the Once-ler in the story of the Lorax.  He didn't think about his actions until he cut down the last truffula tree.  With our addiction to bigger, better, faster, an more, I doubt we will stop ourselves until it's too late. 


A protest against lithium mining in China that kills the fish in the Lichu River.


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