Quote:

Electric vehicles are promoted as the solution for combating “climate change.” Governments are currently incentivizing the production of electric vehicles, while punishing the fossil fuel industry. However, lithium mining for electric vehicles is incredibly destructive to the environment, and is about as far from “green” as one could imagine. Not to mention, most of the lithium-ion batteries produced today come from China and require water-intensive mining operations that ravage natural environments throughout Australia, Argentina and Chile. The process depletes ground water, and leaves behind toxic wastewater that contaminates fields and harms wildlife. The mining process is not carbon dioxide free, either. The mining process releases 15,000 kilograms of carbon dioxide emissions for every ton of lithium that is extracted. There are serious environmental risks to extracting lithium for the production of lithium-ion batteries. When lithium is extracted from salt mines, the miners must drill into the salt flats and pump out a salty, mineral-rich brine. The brine is placed in large pools, so the water can evaporate out. When the brine evaporates, it leaves behind a sludge of potassium, manganese, borax and lithium salts that must be filtered out further. The process pollutes nearby aquifers and lowers the water table, interfering with water sources in the local environment. The lithium extraction process takes several months, displaces valuable water resources, and leaves behind a toxic trail of wastewater in the local environment. It takes approximately 500,000 gallons of water to produce one ton of lithium. When mining companies head into countries like Chile, they use up a majority of the region’s water, unjustly affecting small communities. According to the Institute of Energy Research, Chile’s Salar de Atacama is one of the driest places on Earth, yet the mining companies are allowed to use up 65% of the region’s water. After the brine is removed from the salt flats, the water table automatically falls, disrupting the natural flow of water that is needed for wells and agriculture. These large-scale disruptions can always be blamed on “climate change” as the lithium mining industry plunges ahead, with no regard for the environmental damage wrought in its wake. Water quality, wildlife populations, and crops all adversely affected by lithium mining The toxic chemicals that are used to extract the brine are ultimately discarded into the local environment, where they contaminate streams, crops, wildlife and local ecosystems. The toxic chemicals, which include hydrochloric acid, leak from the evaporation pools and pollute the nearby water supply. Additionally, the large open pit mines displace arsenic into the nearby streams and rivers, where it will eventually deposit into agricultural land and be taken up by the crops. This downstream pollution is dangerous to wildlife, too. For example, in May of 2016, the Liqi River was polluted by the Gangizhou Rongda Lithium mine. The river turned up with dead fish, yak and cows. The lithium mining operation in Salar de Atacama displaces more than 1,700 liters of lithium-rich brine every second of operation. This causes the lakes to shrink, killing off local flamingo populations that depend on the basin to eat and breed. In Argentina, lithium mining caused noticeable contamination of nearby streams that were used to feed livestock and irrigate crops. The residents of Salar de Hombre Muerto noticed that the groundwater flow had changed, causing water resources to disappear. They also noticed that that freshwater was contaminated with salty brine, destabilizing the local ecosystems and negatively affecting bird migration and llama populations — which the indigenous communities depend upon for economic survival. “Like any mining process, it is invasive, it scars the landscape, it destroys the water table and it pollutes the earth and the local wells,” said Guillermo Gonzales, who spoke about the issues with lithium from the University of Chile back in 2009. “This isn’t a green solution – it’s not a solution at all.”

Edit:  https://www.naturalnews.com/2022-09-21-lithium-mining-for-electric-vehicles-destroys-environment.html#

The green dream turning to nightmare. :-/

And more...

The Environmental Impact of Lithium Batteries.

In Australia, only 2% of the country’s 3,300 tonnes
of lithium-ion waste is recycled.

Poisoning people to save the planet

The blades from environmentally friendly subsidised bird- and bat-chomping inefficient wind turbines have a short life and cannot be recycled. They weigh 10-20 tonnes, are 40-60 metres long, need to be replaced every 15 years or less and are composed of plastic, fibreglass, balsa wood and resins. Balsa wood is produced by chopping down Brazilian rainforests, in an environmentally friendly way of course. Fibreglass is impregnated with epoxy resins to increase blade strength and are made from petroleum. Previously blades were disposed of in Third World countries for a pittance until these countries ungraciously decided not to be the dumping ground for First World toxic rubbish. The wind industry was miffed and took to dumping used blades illegally until communities objected.

Bisphenol A is a highly toxic synthetic organic compound used in the epoxy resins of turbine blades. Epoxy resins contain 30-40 per cent bisphenol A and turbine blades are the largest global consumer of epoxy resins. The annual global production of bisphenol A is about 2 billion kilograms and is increasing because the spearing of the environment with wind turbines is today’s fad.

Bisphenol A is an endocrine disrupter that has been linked to about 80 diseases including cancers and reproductive disorders. It is lethal for young children. In 2012, the World Health Organisation warned about the potentially carcinogenic properties of endocrine disrupters and concluded that they pose a global threat to public health. The European Food Safety Authority has massively reduced by 1,000 times the dietary intake of bisphenol A to one hundred millionth of a gram per kilogram of body weight per day. All this is public record information which the wind industry must know.

The leading edges of turbine blades shed fine dust and blade edges only have a 5-year guarantee. Each blade sheds a minimum of 0.2 to 2.5 grams of bisphenol A in dust per year. This dust is spread wide and far by wind. If one gram of bisphenol A gets into dam waters, 10 million litres of water are rendered unusable. Over the life of a turbine, this equates to pollution of half a trillion litres of water per turbine. This is real pollution, not the alleged pollution of carbon dioxide, the gas of life. This dust from eroding blades has covered large areas of our planet and bisphenol A is leaching into soils and waterways. This is a toxic time-bomb.

The effects of offshore wind turbines are unknown except that the blades are larger and the blades have a shorter life because the erosion of blades is more rapid in the more extreme conditions. Winds and currents disperse the bisphenol A dust and bisphenol A is acutely toxic for marine life with younger organisms affected far more than the older members of their species. If you want to shuffle off before your time, eat fish caught from near an offshore wind turbine.

Quality assurance, quality control and a technical due diligence obviously did not take place when governments rushed to replace tried and proven reliable cheap coal-fired electricity with ideological weather-dependent wind and solar. Renewables despoil the landscape, sterilise food-producing land, kill wildlife and spread toxins wide and far. This is not environmentalism.

The carbon dioxide emissions released in the manufacture and construction of a wind turbine industrial complex are far greater than the carbon dioxide emissions saved. The energy used to manufacture, construct and maintain wind turbines is far greater than will ever be produced in their working life. The large-scale slaughter of birds and bats, the sterilisation of some 25 hectares of land for each turbine and the criss-crossing of land with construction and service tracks and wires is apparently in the name of the environment. The more renewable energy that enters the grid, the higher the domestic electricity costs and the more infrastructure needs to be built.

..

Who were the politicians and green bureaucrats that allowed such broad-scale pollution when the toxicity of major components of turbine blades was well documented? Who were the bureaucrats and politicians who allowed monstrous eyesores to be speared over the countryside that kill birds and bats? Whatever happened to the environmentalist’s precautionary principle? We’ve been conned and we’ll pay for it many times over.

Professor Ian Plimer