When you’re in a hole, stop digging. If the hole is climate breakdown, stop digging coal. Green growthers pretend to recognise this, they say we must stop digging coal, but they assume business as usual can carry on – same economic system, different sources of energy. But the digging will continue, on a massive scale.
If all fossil fuels are switched for renewables, if the world’s vehicle fleet is replaced by electric alternatives, then the planet’s lithium reserves will all be mined—and the process of mining will in itself take an immense amount of energy. Much of this will reproduce relations of imperialism as well—look at Germany’s lithium-grab in Bolivia. The rich car-producing states are lining up.
The solutions that the green growthers are projecting don’t add up. Of course, they’ll respond: ‘lithium was only discovered as a chemical for batteries in the 1990s and in ten years time there’ll be a new one discovered’. Maybe. But we can’t bet the future of the planet on this kind of speculation.
the whole needing fuck loads of batteries and so needing fuckloads of lithium thing ( from our cars to our new wireless everything ) is why the whole Nuclear vs Cheap Solar debate isn’t going to go away anytime soon imo. I mean just cause other renewable are cheaper to build and install doesn’t mean they’re better what are you a cost-minded capitalist or something.
