People think I live in a mining town. It’s not, it’s an agricultural town, and it always has been. There has been some mining on the fringes of the valley, but for the most part the town has always been involved with farming and ranching.
Recently the valley has become a site of controversy involving mining, though. Someone wants to start a lithium mine at the north end of the valley, and they have selected a site that is already home to a rare species of flower that people are trying to make an endangered species. There were posters up in town asking people if they had seen the flower, but no one had.
The controversy continues to this day, especially after some ground squirrels ate all the artificially planted flowers. At first everyone thought it was vandalism, but it soon became clear that it was the local wildlife that did the job. Anyway, I haven’t heard much about the damn flower or the mine in recent days. I assume everything is still going as planned, though.
So what can I say about mining? I can remember a series of illustrations from 1979 talking about “the wonders of strip-mining.” It showed the process of stripping away an entire hillside to get to the coal seam below, then putting the dirt back and replanting it. But this is not exactly how it was done. Most corporations just stripped the ground, and if they bothered to replant, they didn’t even take into consideration the local vegetation.
I remember in about 2004 there was this ad running on TV talking about “low-emission” coal, which was being pushed at the time. They didn’t really say much while a bunch of Playboy Bunny type young women smeared with black dirt chopped away at coal in bikinis and Sixteen Tons played in the background. My asexual ass, however, noticed the discrepancy.
You notice we don’t hear much about low emission coal these days. I think the corporations have given up on trying to convince us that such a nasty, dirty, polluting, land-tearing source is “clean” by any means. Coal is the enemy, as it should be. We are too far advanced in technology to be burning a rock anymore.
But what of the lithium that everyone is after now. Is it really any better for the environment? It seems we have traded one scourge for another, and we don’t seem to have any idea how to create energy without somehow tearing up the land, killing everything in sight, wasting water, and destroying whole ecosystems.
I see it all over in the energy industry, even the “green” energy industry. Just look at flash steam solar. This method uses a series of mirrors to create molten salt in a tower, which is used to boil water and create steam. There are many problems with this form of “green” power. First, the mirrors burn up wildlife and pose a fire hazard. Secondly, the plants require copious amounts of toxic coolant. Thirdly, and probably worst of all, they do not recycle the water, simply pumping it straight out of fossil water aquifers in the desert with no plans to replenish it.
Oh, and do you remember that meme being passed around social media about there never being a “solar spill?” Yeah, that’s wrong. Down in southern California, one of these flash steam solar plants had such a severe coolant spill that a lawsuit was filed. So yes. There has been a “solar spill” out there.
It doesn’t have to be this way, either. We don’t have to cover every open tract of wildland with solar panels and wind turbines. That is just as destructive as burning fossil fuels. There are delicate ecosystems in these places that need that land, not to mention the fact that humans need wildlands to preserve their health and sanity. We can’t spend our days in boxes in the city.
Well, that’s what one guy I spoke to wants. He says anyone who lives in a rural area is “selfish” and that those areas should just be industrialized with solar and wind power. Talk about someone who’s lost their way and has no focus on the environment he once wanted to save. Besides, it’s those “selfish” rural people who farm the food that he buys at Whole Foods in the first place. Where does he suppose this food comes from? Magic?
Out-of-touch environmental extremists aside, there are ways to make green energy low impact and possibly make more electricity than we ever could with fossil fuels. Remember all those strip mines I talked about earlier? Well, they can be put to good use today. In Wales, engineers are commandeering old open pit coal mines and installing solar arrays. Why not? The land is already spoiled, polluted, and unusable for anything else.
There are plenty of places like that in the United States. Strip mines, open pits, waste disposal sites, and ground so contaminated that nothing can live there. It seems I’m not the only one thinking this way, either. I recently learned that the U.S. government is looking into using the polluted Hanford nuclear reserve for solar arrays.
There are more places that solar, in particular, can be installed. A lot of urban areas are starting to take advantage of the open space on buildings to install solar arrays. Not far from where I live, an entire picnic area was installed at a school with a solar array over the top of it. Kids can eat their lunch in the shade while power is generated above their heads.
Recent explorations have been launched into installing solar panels over California’s aqueduct system. This would not only produce an exceptional amount of solar energy, it would also save this threatened water supply from evaporation in the desert and Central Valley. This is already being done in India, where some towns are powered by their aqueducts.
A few cities have installed water turbines in their sewer systems. What are these for? Well, when water moves through the sewer system, the turbines are turned and produce small amounts of energy that are then used to power things in the city. An experiment with these turbines is being conducted in the city of Portland, Oregon.
There are other experiments going on. In the City of Los Angeles, small wind turbines have been installed on freeway signs. These turbines turn with the wind created by traffic movement and power the lights that keep the signs visible at night. Small wind turbines are also being installed on buildings.
It seems that we are coming out of the green energy dark ages of the 2010s, when everyone just built on land willy-nilly without thinking of the consequences. I’m not the only one out there who wants to preserve our wildlands and keep industrialization where it belongs. Because that’s what it is- industrialization- and we need to treat it as such.
The issue of the 2020s is not land usage, it’s mining. At the moment, we rely on lithium batteries for storage, for running electric cars, and for other things. That lithium mining is threatening water supplies, ecosystems, and Native American populations. It is the primary reason I’ve never gotten an electric car.
There are a lot of other reasons I do not agree with Biden’s call for electric cars, actually. For one thing, he does not realize how expensive an electric car is for the average American. None of these politicians do, and if you tell a left-leaning politician that it is a problem, they scold you like a little child about “being responsible” and “loving the Earth.” Yeah, we’d all love to be responsible, if we had the means to afford it, you out-of-touch, rich, spoiled brats!
And while we’re on that topic, when are we going to make the corporations responsible for their environmental impacts? They have a hell of a lot more impact on the environment than some low-income farmer in the middle of nowhere. (Who will not be able to use an electric car, anyway, because the idealists only want to install chargers on interstates.) The ones making the huge carbon impact are the factories and industrialists who shoot out pollution like politicians spew hot air. We are so busy putting the responsibility on the individual that we are forgetting the primary perpetrators on this disgusting environmental travesty.
Anyway, I think there is probably a solution out there for the lithium problem, we just don’t know what it is yet. Perhaps the mine that is going in near my home has developed a lower impact system, but we shall see for ourselves if the mine is ever approved. In the meantime, let’s continue our technological march into the future. Despite what the naysayers whine about, I think there is a solution.
This decade is seeing a change in green energy technology, lithium just hasn’t caught up yet. The solution is out there, and we need to keep digging for it.
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