What is needed is urgent investment – private and public – in technologies that will address these issues. We must find materials for constructing batteries, solar panels and wind turbines without using resources that will lay waste to landscapes or the seabed and we must do this in the shortest time possible. Funding such work must be seen as a critical imperative. We can reach net-zero emissions and protect the environment, but only if such work is financed swiftly and comprehensively.
They’re worried that there won’t be sufficient terrestrial minerals to move away from fossil fuels. But we also mustn’t go deep sea mining because cute worms down there. So, spend fortunes trying to get out of this box.
Which betrays two logical failures – mutually contradictory as they slightly are.
The first is that just because we want there to be a solution doesn’t mean there is. This is true however much of our money is funnelled through the bureaucracy. Chemistry is chemistry, batteries that don’t rely upon cobalt may or may not be possible. But how much Rishi spends makes no difference to that whether they are or not.
The second, and contradictory to some extent, one is that they believe their own errors. All are so tied into this Club of Rome idea that terrestrial minerals are in short supply, that we’re about to run out, that they actually believe there aren’t enough to supply the transition. But this in itself is wrong. There’s plenty of cobalt, of copper, of rare earths, out there. It’s just a matter of how much we’re prepared to pay to get it. Your back garden has all three (or, counting the REs separately, all 19) of them in it. So, how much is your back garden worth, what’s the price of extracting them? Answers there are lots and too much but there’re bits of the planet where this isn’t true. We can indeed gain all the metals we desire we just have to be willing to pay the price. The entire thought that we face a metals shortage is driven by the earlier mistake of not understanding what a mineral reserve is in the first place.
You are overlooking the bit “that will lay waste to landscapes “.
No mining.
So yes, there will be a shortage of these resources, and others, because the ecoloons won’t allow them to be mined.
We are already seeing the SA unleashed against fossil fuel companies, and those who fund or work for them. Next will be mining companies.
Step 1 – secure agreement that all humans MUST stop living the high life this particular way by 2030.
Step 2 – make it impossible for all humans to live the high life any other way.
Has greenism ever been anything but a religion preaching abstinence, austerity, sacrifice, and hellfire if the scapegoats don’t fall in line?
Gimme lots and lots and lots of money.
There. A nice short and simple summary of the article.
But I have to admit that ALL such articles say exactly the same thing.
I’m going to be writing this a lot in the coming years and I apologise for the repetition of a quite simple message. Which is ‘You First’. The writers and editors of this kind of crap should already be living the kind of life which it entails. If they are not, they can be ignored. Or taken to see the Lions of Stevetown.
What is needed is urgent investment – private and public – in technologies that will address these issues.
Oh yeah? The IPCC predicts 1.5 degrees of warming over the century. So where is the urgency?
The critical shortages of phlogiston and dilithium are what wwe hould be worrying about.
Chris- dilithium is actually in plentiful supply but growing the crystals would require Antarctica to have a highway on it, with petrol stations every 10 miles, thus urgent investment is needed to allow them to be grown on the moon.
Without laying waste to the landscape or destroying the seabed
Heaven will provide?
Chris and HB
Have you seen the mess that they left of Troyius after they found crystals there ?
Are any of the shrill voices demanding that vast sums of money should be extorted from ordinary people and spent on something or other have any ability to do the research, development, implementation, sales and support necessary?
Or are they all so-called biens-pensants, or more colloquially, higgerant fuckwits?
Ottokring- No, (last time i called upon Trekkie knowledge i called those brown furry things furbies, it was pointed out with a laugh and a knowing exchange of looks, so no more. But anyway one planet’s a small price to pay for FTLT.
There is always the deep crust and atomic mining (weapons to blast the crust away). Plus asteroid mining. We think far too small!
Boganboy stole my point +100 there. Give me all your money, all your hugs and kisses too is all they care about. Actual problem solving is what down the list.
Tsk *way* down the list
Guy’s got a point though. I feel sure that there are absolutely no corporations investing bucketloads of dosh in trying to discover a smaller, cheaper, lighter way to store electrical energy that used a technology that didn’t rely on rare, expensive chemicals.
I’m equally sure that there are no universities or other research institutes looking to pick up the kudos, Nobel prizes and money that discovering such a technology would bring.
But, of course, there are loads of scientists just waiting for a government somewhere to shovel loads of taxpayer cash their way before embarking on such a research project.
I’m sure they have an objection to asteroid mining as well, they usually have the excuses queued u p ready for when needed. But like how they suddenly started on about micro particulates from car tyres so they still have a reason to complain about electric cars (and bicycles if needed)
I’m pretty sure the solution lies in unobtainium.
The writer is trying to obtain economic growth for the world, which cheap safe batteries would help obtain. Likewise any cheap electrical generation.
The same economic growth the Greens say we need to wean ourselves off. They’re not even consistent.
This is real Triumph of the Will stuff, isn’t it.
With enough magical thinking anything is possible.
It is bullshit from middle class Marxist greenfreak scum. Who want to con the mugs that alternative ways will exist for humanity to remain and develop its prosperity. Without the non-existent environmental damage the eco-freaks wail about.
In truth the middle class Marxist motherfuckers want ongoing prosperity for themselves while we ordinary plebs are flopped lower than whaleshit.
Our solution then is not to debate with or attempt to show brainless garbage the depth of their own stupidity but to beat the shite out of these scumbags., The front end of a fist is the kind of argument they understand.
Anything less is weakness they can exploit.