Beware Of White Oil
December 9, 2020
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“We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.” — Aldo Leopold
“We are all connected; To each other, biologically. To the earth, chemically. To the rest of the universe, atomically.” ― Neil DeGrasse Tyson
Beware Of White Oil
(Pablo Cozzaglio via Getty Images)
The shift from fossil fuel-powered to electrified transport is a top priority in the race to a lower-carbon future. The demand for electric vehicles ( EVs) is exploding — likewise the demand for lithium, a key component in those rechargeable electric car batteries.
Lithium, a silver-white alkali metal, isn’t a rare element, and it’s fairly evenly distributed around the globe. It’s usually found in salt flats, in a handful of places on each continent with enough density to make it worth a major production investment. The metal is found in rock and clay deposits as a solid mineral, as well as dissolved in brine. As the least dense metal, it’s popular with battery manufacturers because it stores a lot of energy for its weight. The Bolivian salt flats in South America are thought to be home to more than 70 percent of the world’s lithium.
Over the next five years, the demand for this so-called “white oil” is expected to more than double — to 820,000 tons. But extraction is complicated, expensive, dangerous, and requires 500,000 gallons of water per ton extracted. It also threatens environmental damage on an industrial scale.
Currently, Europe imports almost every ounce of battery-grade lithium. Even before the pandemic, growing trade protectionism was fueling alarm over sourcing the metal. The urgency in getting a supply has unleashed a mining boom, with companies like UK-based Savannah Resources focusing on deposits closer to home. Most promising have been the rich lithium deposits in central and northern Portugal, on the Iberian Peninsula in the south-western part of the continent.
It’s an enormous tradeoff. The race to extract “white oil” damages the natural environment wherever it is found. But mining companies have EU environmental policy on their side because they’re part of a solution for cutting greenhouse gas emissions. In the tradeoff battle — where there’s profit to be made — local environmental impacts are almost always overlooked.
Some innovators believe there’s a better way to produce battery-grade lithium than digging it out of the ground; they want to recycle it. Much of the half million tons of lithium that has been extracted and refined in the past decade now sits in discarded mobile phones and laptops, and while the batteries in those devices are small, used electric car batteries each contain some 17.6 pounds of reusable lithium. But because lithium is a small part of a battery’s cost, manufacturers aren’t incentivized to find an alternative to mining it. Nor is there enough monetary incentive for existing recycling plants to recycle it.
However, market analysts predict a potential 12-fold increase in the value of the global lithium recycling industry over the next decade; it’s ignited competition among recycling innovators. The challenge is how to access the lithium inside the battery cell, which is compounded by the metal’s extreme volatility (it’s prone to exploding) and its amalgamation with other metals, which are added in for better conductivity. Nevertheless, in Germany alone there are at least four early-stage lithium recyclers.
Some Striking Statistics
(Noorullah Shirzada via Getty Images)
- Brown University’s Costs of War Project shows the number of Afghan civilians killed in airstrikes carried out by the US and its allies has risen 330 percent since 2017. Researchers said the increase in airstrikes was partly because there are fewer US troops on the ground, but also seemed aimed at putting more pressure on the Taliban to negotiate peace.
- The US pulled back on airstrikes and promised to reduce the number of troops in the country after reaching a deal with the Taliban in February 2020. But researchers found that the Afghan military stepped up its own aerial attacks in the months since the US-Taliban agreement was made, even as the government in Kabul remains in talks with the militant group.
- Researchers concluded the Afghan Air Force is now “harming more Afghan civilians than at any time in its history.” Last month the Save the Children charity found that an average of five children in Afghanistan have been killed or wounded every day for the past 14 years. (BBC)
A Puerto Rican Problem
- Protesters in Puerto Rico are demanding Governor Wanda Vazquez declare a state of emergency in response to rising violence against women. So far this year, 49 women have been murdered and 20 have gone missing. It took 4 days for authorities to respond to the kidnapping of a 20-year-old woman on September 17. Her body was found on September 29 on a spot just a 10-minute drive from where she was abducted outside her aunt’s home.
- The spike in femicides is a continuation of a rise that began after 2017’s Hurricane Maria devastated infrastructure on the island. A professor of social work focusing on post-disaster contexts said: “Loss of housing, loss of finances, loss of employment, these are highly correlated with rises in gender violence.” In the wake of natural disasters and now the pandemic, minor assaults against women have become more severe, and severe assaults have become homicides and premeditated murders.
- “When you have all of these compounding stressers, a colonialist model, the hurricanes, the constant earthquakes this year, and now COVID – which takes away people’s support systems—it all adds up,” said another academic who has published reports on gender violence in Puerto Rico. The executive director of a non-profit that assists victims of gender violence on the north side of the island also noted that Puerto Rico’s state of “long-term crisis” is further being exacerbated by inconsistent support, disorganization, and apathy from the police and the government in femicide and abuse cases. (Vice)
Additional World News
- Amid pandemic, Davos event to be held in Singapore next year (AP)
- When rebranding capitalism goes wrong: The Great Reset Conspiracy Smoothie (The Intercept)
- Exclusive: How a suspected Chinese spy gained access to California politics (Axios)
- Putin’s gotta airborne nuclear bunker: Thieves target Russia’s nuclear war ‘doomsday’ plane (Guardian)
- Christchurch Mosque Attack Shows How Killer Eluded New Zealand’s Scrutiny (NPR)
- Walid Fitaihi, an American citizen, is sentenced to six year prison term by Saudi court (WaPo, $)
- U.S. Leaves Behind Afghan Bases — and a Legacy of Land Disputes (NYT, $)
- Former Israeli space chief says aliens exist, and Trump knows about it (NBC). Rumor has it he wants to build a wall in the sky to keep those aliens out too.
- Belgium’s borrowing habit: From guilty pleasure to risky lifeline (Politico)
- Britain launches the West’s first mass coronavirus vaccination — with a Maggie and a William Shakespeare first in line (WaPo, $)
- Argentina passes tax on the super-rich to help pay for Covid response (CNBC)
- It’s not just an American problem: Kicked Off Facebook, Canadian Conspiracy Theorists Made Their Own Social Network (Vice)
- Since 2020 has been nuts, why not send some love with Hub’s peanuts? Send a gift tin of honey-kissed nuts to Mom, or chocolate covered nuts to your brother.
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Don’t Bank On Federal Food Banks
- The Farmers to Families Food Box program, a $4.5 billion food program launched by the Trump administration in May, was supposed to support struggling farmers and feed jobless Americans battered by the pandemic through the end of the year. Now, due to soaring demand and a shortage of federal money, it’s ending a month early in many regions of the country, leaving tens of thousands of families without a critical supply of food.
- Anti-hunger experts warned that several other federal food programs are also set to expire, causing food banks across the country to lose about 50 percent of the food they receive from the Agriculture Department, even as they report an average 60 percent increase in need. “The needs are beyond what we can comprehend,” said a woman who oversees a biweekly food drive in suburban Atlanta. “Six states are right now being told there will be no food, right before Christmas. It’s hard to put into words what this means for the families I serve.”
- A month before the election, the Department of Agriculture insisted that vendors place a letter, written in English and Spanish and signed by the president on White House letterhead, inside all Coronavirus Food Assistance Program emergency food boxes. Anti-hunger advocates and food bank workers were outraged, saying the move violates the Hatch Act and compromises relationships with the food-insecure Americans they serve. It wasn’t the first time the Trump administration was accused of campaigning under the guise of federal pandemic response. (WaPo)
The Lone Star Lawsuit
- In an embarrassing attempt to continue helping President Trump overturn the 2020 election results, Texas’s Republican attorney general Ken Paxton has filed a lawsuit against the states of Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin directly with the US Supreme Court. He’s alleging changes the states made to election procedures amid the coronavirus pandemic are unlawful.
- Paxton accuses election officials in those states of failing to protect mail-in voting from fraud, thus diminishing “the weight of votes cast in [other] states that lawfully abide by the election structure set forth in the constitution.” He’s asking the court to block the four states’ combined 62 electoral college votes from being counted, and to delay the December 14th deadline for all electoral college votes to be cast.
- The states’ election officials have said they found no evidence of such fraud that would change the results, and local and national officials have declared the election the most secure in US history. A professor at Georgetown University’s law school said Texas did not have a legitimate basis to bring the suit. “There is no possible way that the state of Texas has standing to complain about how other states counted the votes and how they are about to cast their electoral votes,” he said. (Guardian)
Additional USA News
- A changing of the guard at the Pentagon: Retired General Lloyd Austin is Biden’s pick for defense secretary (Vox)
- Xavier Becerra, Surprise Pick to Run H.H.S., Is ‘the Latino Joe Biden’ (NYT, $)
- A Tycoon’s Deep-State Conspiracy Dive (New Yorker, $)
- Less TV, more newspaper articles: What Joe Biden reads and watches (Politico)
- The US election’s ‘safe harbor’ deadline is here. What does that mean for Biden? (Guardian)
- How Mark Zuckerberg’s Millions Made Election 2020 Go Smoothly (NPR). Democracy counted on the tech CEO this November.
- Mike Pompeo’s Georgia Pit Stop Looks Like a 2024 Dry Run (Vanity Fair, $)
- A bipartisan program despite its problems… Why Congress is doubling down on the small business Paycheck Protection Program (Axios)
- The $124 billion Supreme Court case that could throw the housing market into turmoil, explained (Vox)
- More than just a pipe dream: Federal Regulators Are Rewriting Environmental Rules So a Massive Pipeline Can Be Built (ProPublica)
- In Portland, Tensions Move From Streets to Court (WSJ, $)
Goodbye To The Cowboy In The Sky
- A “true legend with the right stuff” has died at the age of 97. Chuck Yeager was a heroic WWII fighter pilot. As a post-war test pilot in 1947, Yeager became the first person to break the sound barrier. The fact of the first supersonic flight was one thing, but it was Yeager’s depiction in Tom Wolfe’s 1979 book, The Right Stuff, and Sam Shepard’s portrayal of him in the 1983 film adaptation that cemented the legend.
- Wolfe’s book chronicled the early days of the US space program and the test pilots who made up the first ranks of astronauts. While Wolfe never succinctly defined what he meant by “the right stuff” or “righteousness,” Yeager, who grew up in the hills of West Virginia, encapsulated it for him as the man who was “the most righteous of all the possessors of the right stuff.” Yeager’s lack of a college education meant he was not chosen for NASA’s first man-in-space program, Project Mercury, which ran from 1958 to 1963.
- He did, however, go on to train 26 people who went into orbit as NASA astronauts, part of the Gemini and Apollo programs. Yeager broke numerous speed and altitude records throughout his life, including becoming the first person to travel 2.5 times the speed of sound. After his test pilot heyday, Yeager commanded fighter squadrons and flew 127 combat missions during the Vietnam war. (Guardian)
Additional Reads
- The big one hits a growth spurt, as neighboring nations grow closer: Mount Everest Grew Two Feet in Height, Say China and Nepal (NYT, $)
- Jupiter and Saturn will come within 0.1 degrees of each other, forming the first visible “double planet” in 800 years (CBS)
- New Veggies for a Warming Planet (Nautilus) Will our food change with the climate?
- Man Who Found Hidden Treasure in the Rocky Mountains Is Revealed (NYT, $)
- What Is Your Time Worth? (NPR)
- Is the pandemic making people more generous — or more selfish? (Vox)
- Sweatpants Are the Pandemic’s Biggest Success (Atlantic, $)
- What were we supposed to post? Instagram Couldn’t Handle 2020 Either (The Cut)
- How John Lennon was made into a myth (BBC)