Coups-for-Green-Energy added to Wars-For-Oil
Kollibri terre Sonnenblume
Salar de Uyuni salt plain in Bolivia. (photo by Lion Hirth, public domain)
The US-supported right-wing coup against Bolivian President Evo Morales on November 10th was a serious strike against that nation’s autonomy and its people (especially its indigenous, of whom Morales was one).
Such meddling has defined US foreign policy in Latin America for nearly two centuries, since the Monroe Doctrine of 1823.
“Same song, different verse,” one could say, and that’s true, but each verse has different lyrics and this one features a new element (no pun intended): Lithium.
While Lithium is used as an ingredient in a wide variety of products such as pharmaceuticals, industrial lubricants, desiccants, lenses and even rocket propellants, the fastest growing application is for batteries for electric cars. According to Bloomberg, demand for lithium could “double by 2025.”
Bolivia’s lithium reserves are believed to be the largest in the world.
A conservative estimate puts their share at nearly a quarter of the world’s total, though the government has claimed it to be as high as 70% [Lithium Today].
Regardless of the exact amount, Bolivia’s supply is globally recognized to be significant, enough to have attracted the attention of China and Germany, among other countries.
Obviously, US interests in Bolivia are not about democracy, freedom or the rule of law, as Trump disingenuously stated. They’re not solely about lithium either; the socialist politics of Morales are anathema to capitalist elites the world over.
Similarly, Iraq was not solely about oil.
But with lithium, we’re talking about a substance that could become “one of the most important commodities on earth” so yes, it has some bearing.
[See: Bolivian Coup Comes Less Than a Week After Morales Stopped Multinational Firm’s Lithium Deal and Bolivia coup against Morales opens opportunity for multinational mining companies.]
The big dream of “green energy” is that society will just be able to switch from one source to another without changing anything fundamentally. How perversely appropriate, then, that US foreign policy would not have change to fundamentally either. To wars for oil, we’ll just add coups for green energy. That’s not an improvement.
Here our attention is called to a big blind spot in US liberalism. “Defense” spending devours over half the discretionary budget; the Pentagon is the world’s largest institutional polluter; the military has approximately 800 bases around the world in over 80 countries.
The facts are plain: the US is a bloated empire, defiling the planet and retaining our ’60s era title of “greatest purveyor of violence in the world.”
But these facts go virtually unmentioned by Democrats, either the leadership or the rank-and-file.
Here’s this monstrous institution that’s exceptionally expensive, ecocidal, and murderous, and it’s off the table. That’s obscene.
The text of the “Green New Deal” as proposed by AOC and others does not mention military spending or activities, though both must be drastically curtailed to address the multiple environmental crises inflicting the planet. With this omission, the whole program is a non-starter. Throw it out and start over.
As far as all of this is concerned, investigative journalist Cory Morningstar hits it in the bullseye:
Without anti-imperialism as a foundational building block of every social movement, without a comprehensive understanding of history and the existing power structures at work, we not only fail our brothers and sisters in the Global South, we fail as a species. Not only will our social justice movements be fought in vain, all legitimate ecological movements undertaken to protect what remains of our natural world will also prove to be futile.”
Exactly. The stakes are high. This is no time to pussy-foot around, play dumb, or put our faith in half-measures. Yet we are ignoring this central truth of our world.
Further, we must take a close look at anything labeled “green.” That includes lithium mining, no matter who’s doing it.
The highest concentrations of lithium are found in the briny groundwater beneath salt flats. This water is pumped up and collected in shallow ponds where it is left to evaporate. The remaining precipitated solids are subjected to a chemical process to extract the lithium.
Such salt flats exist only in arid places in the world and the removal of the brine tends to lower surrounding water tables, affecting local wildlife and humans. Toxic chemicals are introduced into the water, soil and air. Heaps of sludge pile up. Plants and micro-organisms are killed and animals depart.
In short, the sites subjected to this industry are irrevocably wrecked. That ain’t green at all.
These are not theoretical effects. They have been observed at places like Chile’s Atacama salt flats, where lithium extraction has been happening for years. [See here & here.]
In an article about the environmental issues of lithium mining, Bloomberg quoted a Chilean biologist, Cristina Dorador, who said:
We’re fooling ourselves if we call this sustainable and green mining. The lithium fever should slow down because it’s directly damaging salt flats, the ecosystem and local communities.”
In an piece entitled, “Lithium mining for ‘green’ electric cars is leaving a fetid stain on the planet,” which discussed lithium operations in South America, Raw Story concludes: “The idea that electric cars, or anything with lithium batteries, is ‘green’ might be a farce.”
Bolivia’s Salar de Uyuni, the largest salt flat on Earth (Photo by Anouchka Unel, copyleft Free Art license)
Bolivia’s lithium is found on the Salar de Uyuni, a massive salt plain (at over 4000 square miles in size it is the world’s largest) high in the Andes Mountains (at close to 12,000 feet in elevation). It is a place of startling beauty and the second most popular tourist attraction in Bolivia. However, it has been negatively impacted by just the limited mining activity so far:
Previously, on travelling across the blinding white surface, one could expect to come across mirages, multi-coloured lakes and even flamingos or geysers. This time there are no flashes of light or oases on the world’s largest salt flat, just an inestimable number of artificial lakes, clunking machinery and workers. The new complex of laboratories, pilot plants, prospecting wells and pools covering 27 sq km of the southeastern part of the plain, situated 140km from the town of Uyuni, represents the dreams of more than a generation of politicians – a national lithium industry.
Bolivia’s lithium boom: dream or nightmare?
Morales was calling for much bigger operations, with the main beneficiary to be the state rather than foreign corporations. “We will develop a huge lithium industry,” he said.
Under this plan, the unique Salar de Uyuni would become a sacrifice zone, like Chile’s Atacama.
I abhor the fascists that ran Morales out of office, especially the ones in the US. We have no business messing with anyone’s right to self-determination. I hope that Morales is able to return to power, as he has pledged to do.
At the same time, I wish that Morales could support his revolution some other way, just as I wished that Chavez could’ve avoided oil extraction in the service of his. Just as I wish every day that we here in the belly of the beast could break our deadly habits.
In this era of ever more severe ecological disasters, our most important task as humans is to stop what we’re doing, in the interest of simple survival. In this context, I will venture to say that resource extraction like lithium mining is one of the master’s tools, unfit for dismantling the master’s house.
Even when it’s called “green.”
Originally published on Macska Moksha Press
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In his book “Prescription for the Planet”, Tom Blees makes a convincing case for boron as being a possible super-fuel for future vehicles:
http://www.thesciencecouncil.com/pdfs/P4TP4U.pdf
The concept depends on the availability of essentially unlimited amounts of “clean” energy/electricity which he suggest could be from reactors of the type known as Integral Fast Reactors, as pioneered by Argonne National Lab with their EBR (Experimental Breeder Reactor) in the 1980s and 1990s.
These are similar to, but distinct from, the slightly better known MSRs (Molten Salt Reactors). The latter are often mentioned in connection with thorium (although they do not have to use thorium).
Anyway, in the context of vehicle fuel, the advantage of the idea of using boron in the way Blees describes is that the boron, once “burned” (with the combustion products captured), it can be almost completely recycled and re-used, so you wouldn’t need unlimited amounts of boron into the future. Just enough to get going and additional amounts to provide natural growth.
As it happens, I think a large amount of the world’s boron is mined in the USA (in the form of borax), although there are deposits in other places, e.g. Turkey…..hmm….an American “ally” (?)…
So in the future, they may be talking about the periodic table wars, rather than the oil wars.
The US has become an obscene usurper for the multinational business class and so arrogant as doing it right in our face and stating as much .What are you going to do about it like the bully in the school yard ?
I don’t know how this turns out but would it not be sweet justice if this exploded in their face.
Coups for green energy are written into the GND: only, don’t try and tell anyone. It is best not to mention it at all. However: the scale of these coups and the knock-on effects of our lifestyle choice to go pseudo-green are perhaps incalculable. That is simply due to the exponential increase in aggregate demand for lithium, cobalt and the so-called ‘e-tech’ minerals needed for the 4IR (fourth industrial revolution). Bolivia may be first: but it won’t be the end. Just the beginning of the end.
And Venezuela will not be spared by the aggregate demand of the high global consumption bourgeoisie we all find ourselves in, like it or not. We need diesel to go ‘green’ as all currently available battery technology is too heavy for trucks, lorries, and aviation. And globalisation is a function of its trucks and shipping. But that is another story.
Some of the e-tech minerals (e.g. indium and gallium) are classed as ‘near critical’. Which invokes Liebniz’s ‘Law of the Minimum’. If everything else is abundant: growth is limited by the least abundant mineral. But let’s not worry about that.
Lithium is hardly rare: estimates vary – but there was 365 years of lithium at 2015 rates of consumption. But a Greentech Media survey estimated with exponential increasing ‘green’ demand – that 365 year supply could be consumed in 17 years. Which gives us plenty of time to find some more: or something.
That “act of wild speculation” is not so wild when you consider that EVs need the 100% clean energy replacement of the grid – in five years according to LabourGND.uk – with an increased capacity of 20-33% …depending on whose estimates you rely on. It is not replacing like for like: that’s for sure. Complicated by the fact that 25% of generation power from nuclear is due to be phased out by 2025.
Just for EVs: the UK needs 264,600 tonnes of lithium: which the report says is three quarters of a years supply. When I checked with USGS and Statista: that seems more like several years supply (world supply 41,500 tonnes in 2017: USGS). This is not me wanting to be imprecise: everyone seems to be using different figures and I do not know which ones are real.
That only accounts for the EVs. The National Grid would need something like six months backup: if it is anything like the US grid. Here: Alice Friedemann has calculated the a Li-ion battery to hold a single days backup would be would cost $11.9 trillion dollars, take up 345 square miles, and weigh 74 million tons. This excludes ’round trip efficiency’ of 75% which means the grid would have to be another 33% larger. All this points to insane amounts of solar PV’s; wind farms; tidal barriers etc. And the impossibility of the 100% ‘actual zero’ decarbonised electrification of the grid in five – or even ten years.
Then there is the green imperialist ‘resource frontier’ that is pushed into every corner of the globe looking to maintain the eurocentric high consumption of the few. We drive the resource wars for green energy and the wars for oil to maintain our consumption rates. It is a simple correlation to make. It’s not just lithium: it is everything else to maintain our historically high rates of consumption and emissions – that are six times the world average …according to LabourGND.
So it seems like our ‘cure’ of going ‘green’ will have negative global ramifications on resource cursed countries for decades to come. Coups, proxy wars, and green imperialism in return for bourgeois bad faith socialism: seems fair to me. I thought everyone knew the GND was a green finance capitalist front. When the Green Finance Initiative and UK Export Finance follow UN directives to only fund ‘green’ initiatives – forcing resource cursed fossil fuel economies to go ‘green’ too – there will be plenty of blood money – sorry, green, sustainable development money – for us to live in bourgeois bad faith indefinitely. As the rest of the world is in green bond servitude to pay for it. Only, don’t tell the children. And don’t try and make an election issue of it. Just extend and pretend to the end.
There’s an assumption in the article and some of the BTL comments that had Morales stayed President of Bolivia and gone ahead with lithium mining and production in the way he intended, that the environmental devastation such production would bring will be on the same scale as in Chile.
Chile is not a good model for comparison as it already has a hardline far-right govt under Sebastian Pinera. Morales at least claims to be working for indigenous Bolivians, of whom he is one.
My understanding is that the altiplano region in Bolivia where the salt flats are located is a desolate area with a harsh climate. There is very little rainfall and soil is thin, making the area unproductive for agriculture or any other human activity. If lithium mining and production including refining can underpin Morales’ social reforms and give most Bolivians a chance of living well, it seems churlish of us outsiders to deny Bolivians that chance and opportunity.
The issue has to be over how much control the Morales govt would have exercised over the lithium mining, and what environmental protections Morales would have put in place. Significantly a few days before the coup, Morales had scrapped a deal with a German company and opted for a joint venture project with a Chinese partner which might have given the Bolivian govt a major say in how the mining was to be carried out.
Good points. Objecting from our comfortable Western seats to a distant country taking advantage of its natural resources could appear to be not just churlish, but downright hypocritical, all things considered.
And that Morales had recently opted for a joint venture project with a Chinese partner just before the coup is very interesting indeed. The plot thickens.
Ultimately, the greenest thing you can do is avoid buying new things. An old car may not have the the cleanest emissions but of course it takes FAR more energy and resources to produce a new one and if you’re charging an electric vehicle, where does the grid get its power from? Nuclear?
Repair where possible, use things with care and source what you can pre-loved. I don’t enjoy buying new things at all now (sorry to sound a bit Greta there), with the exception of quality wholefood.
Failing to go off-grid, we won’t be able to avoid the forthcoming scam of ‘green/carbon’ taxation – unless enough of us simply refuse to pay. Worked on the poll tax….
Taxation Rebellion – mass arrears-ing and gluing a few financiers to HMRC buildings. Works for me.
Excellent discussion of the completely amoral soft-white-underbelly of the now rather manically promoted “New Green Capitalism/NGD” Somehow the “New Green Deal” ends up being the “same old deal” for the Indigenous peoples of the world unlucky enough to find themselves existing for millennia on land where “our” Western resources lay just waiting to be plundered. It is also the “same old deal” of unlimited-plunder-for-profit for the myriad of earth’s interrelated ecological systems that sustain all life on the planet. Somehow through the “miracle of the market” and a massive Western propaganda effort – combining openly neocolonial coups – with monetizing and investing in the very destruction of a habitable planet – has simply never felt more – “green.”
Our planet and society are utterly fecked. I really cannot see a reversal of our rapacious greed and time soon, if ever. The neoliberals will not stop. Even Morales the Marxist didn’t care about protecting his environment.
Admin, any chance that you can finally implement the feature to be edit comments, et least for a few minutes after posting? When you planned the upgrade of the site you did say that would be one of the new features. Thanks in anticipation.
It’s time to change the human mentality that decorated this present moment, all the ones before and all the ones that will follow. It made itself available to be thought, that the phrase ‘to see the bigger picture’ is actually off inferior understanding of the matter. It needs to be ‘to see the whole picture’.
When those who still have some reason left to do so, will ponder about the difference between ‘the bigger’ and ‘the whole’, it will strike like lightning.
‘The whole picture’ includes parts not seen. Little is spoken about these areas, although the minds of a many are wiggling like earth worms with each new crime comitted by the western regimes. In the whole picture, there is an area, where not only Rumsfeld, but indeed the entirety of the military industrial complex (U.S.+) creates ‘the realities’ it needs to prosper and aid in claiming the ownership of the entire planet via six ways to Sunday. All options are always on the table – built in. The more brutal, the merrier.
‘The reality’ that is sold here to the insouciant: ‘morales/maduro/indigenous’ = ‘bad, corrupt, undemoratic’ serves as a cover for the real reasons. In the whole picture, the western arms industry lives off conflict and war. When the enemies get bigger, the profits get larger. When the enemies get bigger, more weapons are needed and manufactured – and used.
None of the military industrial shit works without lithium in one way or another. Computers – the things that are built into missiles and are most everywhere now, have a ROM that requires a button size lithium battery. No lithium – no terrorist weapons. This is not to say that there are not other places with lithium, but in Bolivia, the western arms industry with the U.S. regime in the lead will now get a special deal between christian fascists and without any regulations and environmental protection.
It may not need to be added, but it is to be expected that those minerals/resources the western mic requires to survive, will be sourced and those nations that have the resources the mic needs are overthrown. If they can’t be over thrown, they will have to be militarily defeated to ensure that the western mic gets the resources it needs to fight the wars to get the resources it needs to fight the wars it needs to get the funding to fight the wars it needs to get the resources.
It is a self-blowing macho machine with dominas as mic-ceos and needs to be dismantled in its entirety. It needs to be emphasized that the western (U.S.+) war machine/arms industry is much worse than already being the greatest polluter on earth. It also uses up the most carbon fiber, lead, plastic, steel etc – resources. Militarism is a cancer on humanity and its dependence on lithium (among other minerals/resources) freely available in Bolivia has just organized the takeover of Bolivia for the U.S.+ mic.
All this goes to show that there is no ‘green’ way with the military, the spy, lie and execution agencies in it. The whole picture of ‘green’ is quite disturbing – for it should be clear what ‘green’ is truly meant to be.
The US has more than 1000 Bases and/or Military Installations worldwide. Most countries in the world are occupied by US millitary and US-led NATO.
“The facts are plain: the US is a bloated empire, defiling the planet and retaining our ’60s era title of “greatest purveyor of violence in the world.”……………Not according to the BBC and the rest of our MSM in Great Britain though.
And not according to the ABC and the rest of the corporate media in Australia, either.
The United States ‘Department of Defense’ always sounds like a complete misnomer, similar to Orwell’s Ministry of peace. And the UK’s ‘Ministry of Defense’ is another one. Just euphemisms to try and cover up blatant imperialism.
As to the environmental concerns of lithium mining, this is a tricky one. It’s obvious that damaging and destroying pristine and beautiful parts of the earth is not a good thing. But even if humanity radically changed its ways and moved to a sustainable existence, we’d still have a use for much lithium. Perhaps advances in extracting lithium from sea water could be a future answer. Though as extraction through salt flats is easier and so more profitable, and we’re all so hungry for lithium, the prospects for the health of the salt flats don’t look good.
And if any site boffins are reading this, there is a typo in paragraph 12; ‘change to’ instead of ‘to change’. Not that it really matters of course, but thought I’d mention it anyway.
Until 1947, it was officially known as the Department of War.
In the UK, it was the War Office, until 1964 when it became the MOD
And the building that housed it continued to be known as the Old War Office Building for many years. It’s now in private hands, apparently:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Office#War_Office_building
Going off at a tangent, Roger Stone in the US has just been convicted of multiple charges in the Democrats’ Russia Witch Hunt against Trump.
He is looking at many years in jail.
The man is an incorrigible political grifter of many years’ standing, and people may not feel a great deal of sympathy for a somewhat reptilian operator like him.
But his conviction further underlines the corrupt and politicised nature of the US “justice” system.
And what Julian Assange can expect when he is exposed to its tender mercies. Or other figures like Max Blumenthal and Medea Benjamin.
Outside interference in the continent has never been more than an unmitigated disaster for all humanity.
100 million plus victims in the Native American Genocide, the real holocaust of world history, which is continuing to this day.
2 billion ounces of silver were extracted from Potosi alone by the Spaniards, using genocidal slave labour.
An unbroken record of mass murder, slavery, racism and rapacious exploitation that has remained unchanged.
58 oligarch families control the economy and politics of the continent.
They own the banks, industry, agriculture, media, and politicians.
These 58 families own more than the bottom 250 million inhabitants of Latin America.
And they are ever ready to whore themselves out to Uncle Sam to support the latter’s endless coups and intrigues, or whatever bogus Green Agenda comes along, to preserve their wealth and privilege.
While I agree with what you say, is using the phrase ‘bogus Green Agenda’ in the above context really helpful? I can accept that a ‘green agenda’ has been in some ways hijacked or co-opted by certain powers that be, and that environmental issues can be big business, but this fact doesn’t invalidate all environmental concerns, all environmental activists, or all green agendas.
It’s just that I think that carelessly linking the word ‘bogus’ and ‘green agenda’ is in many ways actually helping the wealthy and privileged keep the status quo. The phrase is re-enforcing the message that nothing needs to be done.
I have no problem with people voting a comment of mine down, but sometimes an explanation as to why a comment has been voted down would be helpful.
Why is nobody mentioning that Evo Morales has been president of Bolivia ever since 2006 till last week: three full terms totaling over 12 years? Was there no lithium before or were the US or China sleeping?
The 2016 Bolivian constitutional referendum rejected a 4th term for any president. Morales could have avoided any conflict by letting his no.2, Vice President Álvaro García Linera for the no. job but apparently his ego didn’t allow for that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Bolivian_constitutional_referendum
A non conspiracy case.
Don’t think this current situation was not planned out either from the sidelines of Mr. Morales party. Perhaps there was reason in what appears to be a coup one day and a resignation the other.
Even western nations were not sure what the heck happened. I mean it took Canadian imbeciles a good 5 days to say something, needless to assume it took some time for Mrs. Freeland and her handlers to explain to Mr. Trudeau what his position on Bolivia is.
Mexico seemed ready and waiting and surprisingly organized in its decisively quick minded decision to aide Mr. Morales.
Perhaps the only two being played are Mrs. Anez and Mr. Mesa, interestingly against each other. Just enough to spark unrest and have Mr. Morales comfort the nation, while all the same returning as the white night. The constitution would need to be re-written after all – to avoid such future mishaps.
Lets see how it plays out.