Essay by Eric Worrall
“Everything is an emergency now” – How governments declaring climate emergencies can deny applications to mine Lithium and other important minerals from the region Wild sensitive?
The rush to renewables means a new mining boom. But first, Australia needs to make some tough choices
Four corners / By Angus Grigg, Jeanavive McGregor and Lucy Carter
Electric cars, solar panels, large batteries and wind turbines – the technology needed to go green is based on what can be a dirty industry.
“It’s ironic, but to save the planet, we’ll need more mines,Allison Britt, director of mineral resources at government agency Geoscience Australia, said.
Demand for one of the biggest mining surges the world has ever seen is forcing some tough choices and redrawing old battle lines between environmentalists and miners.
In Tasmania, a mine that has been leaking contaminated water for the past five years wants permission to expand into a wilderness because the lead, zinc and copper it produces are important for solar panels, electric cars and wind turbines.
King Island, known for its high-end produce and rugged beauty, will soon be home to one of the world’s largest tungsten mines.
Outside of Darwin, an open-pit mine that will produce lithium vital for electric car batteries appears to have affected local waterways.
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“Everything is an emergency now,” Entrepreneur and inventor Saul Griffith, whose advocacy organization Rewire America has consulted for American politicians and businesses.
“We need to build wind turbines 10 times faster than we can. We need to produce solar cells 10 times faster. We need to produce batteries and electric vehicles 10 times faster than we do today.”
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The main beneficiaries of this free-to-all are mining entrepreneurs, who are rushing to execute their mine expansion plans and environmental permits with minimal oversight, under the guise of address the climate emergency.
Once dead, environmentalists are now advocating, or at least passively accepting, new mines and wholesale destruction of pristine wilderness areas, in order to maintain the flow of minerals needed to give their green energy illusions.
How did we get to this point?
In my opinion, it was the wind turbines that opened the floodgates. When people see environmentalists passively accepting Wind turbines slaughter thousands of endangered birdsClearly the key to getting environmentalists to roll with the destruction of wilderness is their belief in a climate crisis. Now every conceivable act of vandalism for the sake of profit is being seen as an important stepping stone on the road to net zero.
A few purists warned that something was amiss, and requesting a pausebut the majority have yet to realize that they are all owned by the mining industry.
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