Lithium is a Non-Renewable Resource: Mining It ‘Rapes the Earth’
Updated
Lithium is the deep state’s famous standout in the race to net-zero emissions. Indeed, the shady agenda climate change pushers depend heavily on the prized metal to power electric vehicles and to store wind and solar power. Unfortunately, as they fight to destroy fossil fuels, they fail to mention that lithium mining is hugely toxic and is a consequential hazard to the environment. A recent article from the Alliance for Natural Health International (AHN) titled “Lithium fields—out of sight, out of mind,” addressed the hidden environmental costs of lithium mining, and it is troubling. Besides releasing massive forever chemicals, lithium mining has severe negative impacts on landscapes, ecosystems, and communities in regions like Chile’s Atacama Desert. The article notes that, despite the mining industry’s exploration of technological advances geared toward reducing its ecological footprint, important questions remain, such as:
Should we continue to rape the Earth for lithium in the race to electrify? Do electric vehicles (EVs) do more good than harm? Are the supply chains for the resources needed to electrify our world sufficiently transparent for us to evaluate them properly? Can we really call the move away from fossil fuels towards hyper-electrification another green revolution?
AHN is correct; these are fundamental questions that the climate change fiends have failed to answer. Why? Because the data required to answer them adequately is just not available, and they don’t seem to care. That fact is ominous enough, but the article highlights the devastation of lithium mining by declaring, “what we do know suggests we should be concerned—very concerned.”
Lithium mining demands a lot of water. Extracting one ton of lithium requires about 500,000 liters of water and can result in the poisoning of reservoirs and related health problems. It also competes with local communities and ecosystems already spread thin by water scarcity. Indigenous groups and environmental activities have persistently raised concerns about the depletion of essential freshwater sources by lithium mining. This greedy practice, raping the Earth and making billions for a small handful, threatens the local biodiversity and traditional way of life in the places invaded by mining.
As explained by AHN, there are indeed serious hidden environmental costs of lithium mining, often called the “white gold” of the energy revolution. Knowing that, why is lithium such a significant part of the “green energy” push? Sure, it is the lightest mineral on Earth, and it converts chemical energy into electrical energy very efficiently. That sounds great, but is extracting it from Earth worth the damage and destruction it causes? In reality, lithium mining sounds just as bad or worse than drilling for fossil fuels. Of course, there’s the massive profit, which is what it’s really all about (well, that and creating a society more easily controlled). The global market value of lithium was $4.2 billion in 2023 and is expected to increase to nearly $6.68 billion by 2030.
Lithium is extracted using two main methods. Brine extraction—which is commonly used in regions like the Atacama Desert in Chile—is lithium-rich brine pumped from underground reservoirs into large evaporation ponds. Sunlight evaporates the water over months, concentrating lithium. The concentrated brine is processed to extract lithium carbonate or lithium hydroxide. The second method is hard rock mining. In this process, spodumene ore is mined from lithium-rich rocks like pegmatites. The ore is crushed and heated to high temperatures, followed by chemical treatments to extract lithium. Both methods have environmental impacts, including water usage, pollution, and habitat disruption.
The brine extraction process disrupts nature’s delicate balance of salt flats, leading to land subsidence, which is the gradual or sudden sinking of the Earth’s surface. What? Caused by the movement of subsurface materials, the destruction can range from small, local collapses to large-scale regional lowering of the land. Moreover, the drying up of freshwater sources has a devastating impact on wildlife. And as previously mentioned, chemical leaks (deadly forever chemicals) and waste from lithium mining contaminate the soil and groundwater, threatening for years to come the livelihood and agriculture of locals. Knowing this, why is the deep state pushing so hard for a solution that is not a solution at all but instead appears to be an even bigger environmental problem?
Besides making the Earth and other forms of life sick, the human health problems associated with lithium mining are also very real and are primarily linked to water and soil contamination from chemical processes. The chemicals used in lithium extraction, like hydrochloric acid and other toxic substances, can seep into water sources, affecting drinking water and agricultural lands, leading to respiratory issues, skin irritation, and long-term exposure risks for local communities. Additionally, dust and particulate matter from open-pit hard rock mining can aggravate conditions like asthma for both workers and nearby residents. Long-term exposure and inhalation of dust from lithium mining, which contains silica and other minerals, is harmful to the lungs and can lead to chronic respiratory diseases like silicosis and pulmonary fibrosis, both of which are risk factors for lung cancer.
While countries like Chile, Argentina, and Bolivia account for over half of the world’s lithium supply, the United States is pushing hard to ramp up lithium mining within its own borders. After all, it sits on some of the largest lithium reserves in the world. Interestingly, the United States was the world’s largest producer and consumer of lithium until the 1980s, when foreign production surpassed domestic. The first known lithium production in the United States occurred in 1923 at a spodumene deposit in North Carolina, where pegmatites—granite-like rocks that house rare elements such as lithium—are 350 to 330 million years old.
Notably, despite being a key component in the mad dash for renewable energy, lithium is not a renewable energy source at all. It is a non-renewable metal that takes millions of years to form and is not easily replenished. So once the millions of years old minerals are gone, they’re gone. Importantly, ANH’s article posed a paramount question as the electrification revolution rapidly unfolds: How do we power the future without compromising the planet and all the beings who inhabit it? The article rightly concluded:
“We have to stop the world’s transition to non-fossil fuel, so-called renewable energy coming at the expense of the ecosystems and communities that depend on the land from which lithium is extracted. We, the public, need to push for much greater transparency on supply chains, to understand the impacts of wasteful consumption of luxury items, including electronic goods, and stop taking things at face value. We need to think twice, or maybe three or four times, before we blindly buy the latest car or gadget that’s claimed to be a solution to the environmental catastrophe that’s often defined only in terms of carbon. If the latest tech includes lithium, that’s more important than ever.”