Easier Option

Well, you could choose to go through all this hassle:

The world’s richest known lithium deposit lies deep in the woods of western Maine, in a yawning, sparkling mouth of white and brown rocks that looks like a landslide carved into the side of Plumbago Mountain

But like just about everywhere in the U.S. where new mines have been proposed, there is strong opposition here. Maine has some of the strictest mining and water quality standards in the country, and prohibits digging for metals in open pits larger than three acres. There have not been any active metal mines in the state for decades, and no company has applied for a permit since a particularly strict law passed in 2017. As more companies begin prospecting in Maine and searching for sizable nickel, copper, and silver deposits, towns are beginning to pass their own bans on industrial mining.

“Our gold rush mentality regarding oil has fueled the climate crisis,” says State Rep. Margaret O’Neil, who presented a bill last session that would have halted lithium mining for five years while the state worked out rules (the legislation ultimately failed). “As we facilitate our transition away from fossil fuels, we must examine the risks of lithium mining and consider whether the benefits of mining here in Maine justify the harms.”

Advocates for mining in the U.S. argue that, since the country outsources most of its mining to places with less strict environmental and labor regulations, those harms are currently being born by foreign residents, while putting U.S. manufacturers in the precarious position of depending on faraway sources for the minerals they need.

Geologists say there’s also likely a lot more lithium in spodumene deposits across New England. Communities that haven’t had working mines in years may soon find themselves a key source for lithium and other minerals needed for car batteries, solar panels, and many of the objects people will need more of to transition themselves off polluting fossil fuels.

There are good reasons for U.S. communities to have healthy skepticism about mining projects; there is no shortage of examples of a company coming into a community, mining until doing so becomes too expensive, then leaving a polluted site for someone else to clean up. There are more than 50,000 abandoned mines in the western United States alone, 80% of which still need to be remediated.

But of course, there’s no story without there being rayyyycism, and the Injuns:

Environmental concerns aren’t the only problem with mining, Morrill says. The history of mining in the U.S. is linked to colonialism; Christopher Columbus was looking for gold when he stumbled across North America, and as Europeans expanded into the continent, they took land from Indigenous people to mine for gold, silver, and other metals.

Today, mining in the U.S. often encroaches on Indigenous land. Under mining laws in the U.S. that date to 1872, anyone can stake a claim on federal public lands and apply for permits to start mining if they find “valuable” mineral deposits there. Most lithium, cobalt, and nickel mines are within 35 miles of a Native American reservation, Morrill says, largely because in the aftermath of the 1849 gold rush, the U.S. military removed tribes to reservations not far from mineral deposits in the West. In one particularly controversial project, the mining company Rio Tinto wants to build a copper mine on Oak Flat, Ariz., a desert area adjacent to an Apache reservation that Indigenous groups have used for centuries to conduct cultural ceremonies.

…and on and on it goes.  (Read it all until you begin to glaze over;  we’ve had these arguments so often that everyone knows what’s going on.)

OR:

We could just continue to use oil to power our cars and trucks, figuring that the gross pollution difference between batteries and electric cars (production and consumption) and using internal combustion engines is pretty much a wash.

But then that wouldn’t be an insane choice made by gibbering eco-lunatics now, would it?

Uneven Surfaces

I see that the Climate Loonies have been playing their little games again, this time in Germany:

Climate activists blocked flights at two German airports for several hours Thursday in protest against the most polluting form of transportation, and to demand tougher government action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The group Last Generation said several of its members entered the grounds of Hamburg Airport around 6 a.m. (0400 GMT) and glued themselves to the runway on the first day of the school vacation in the north German city.

Dozens of flights were canceled and 10 arrivals had to be diverted to other airports, Germany’s dpa news agency reported.

Well, you can’t have airliners taking off over these human speedbumps, of course, so I propose some remedial action, toot sweet:

Or, if that tears up the surface of the runways too much, there’s always this option:

That’s called “crowd control with a schmear”.

Even better, we could use those as practice runs for bigger protests.

Just Stop Oil are planning their most annoying action yet as the eco-zealots said they will ‘paralyze London’ with slow-marching columns 10 times bigger than anyting they have previously done.

The climate activists are set to travel to London from all over the UK to disrupt the capital during rush-hour on Monday.

I’m thinking that crushed bone would make an excellent pothole filler.

Quote Of The Day

From Steve Kruiser:

“The radical leftists don’t have the numbers on any issue, they merely have volume.”

He’s writing in the present tense specifically about the trannie issue, but the truth of the matter is that the radical Left has never had the numbers on any issue, ever.

Which is why they try to rule with a Vanguard, or an unelected Politburo, or by bureaucratic regulation when they can’t get their laws passed.

Always a minority, posing as a majority — just another of their parade of lies ever since they began.

Contempt

One of my favorite cartoon strips of all time was the late (and much-missed) Johnny Hart’s B.C. series.  The single cartoon which tickled me most when I first read it, maybe forty years ago, was this exchange:

“Oh Great Guru, what is the definition of contempt?”
“Winning the Husband Of The Year Award, and sending your mistress to give your acceptance speech.”

I have a new definition of contempt, and there’s nothing funny about it.  Try this one:

A key lawmaker reacted in disbelief Tuesday when a Biden cabinet official said the climate change agenda took priority over the livelihoods of blue collar workers because “there’s a lot of jobs.”

You have to read the entire exchange to get the full flavor of the contempt that senior government employees people (like this watermelon Deb Haaland) have for the working class.

And we know that they despise the working class even more because they support someone like Donald Trump, who actually does care about blue-collar jobs.  So the Greens get a double win:  ecology “protection” and punishing Trump voters.

How nice for them.

Lies Upon Lies Upon Lies

Thanks are owed to Jack Hellner at American Thinker  for taking the time to do what I’ve been too lazy to do:  cataloguing all the climate lies of the past fifty or so years.

I’m reminded of Hitchens’s Razor, that statements presented without evidence can equally be dismissed without evidence.  Trouble is that the Climate Charlatans have repeatedly presented evidence, except that the data themselves have been not only fallacious but outright lies, fabrications and distortions.

So… when can we begin the mass hangings and firing squads?

Missing The Point, Somewhat?

You see, I always thought that wind vanes were supposed to generate power.  Silly me:

Scotland’s green-obsessed left-separatist government has been left with egg on its face by revelations that dozens of gigantic onshore wind turbines are having to be hooked up to diesel generators, leaking thousands of litres of hydraulic oil into the countryside.

All this because — and I know this will come as a shock to many — Scotland is fucking cold during winter, and the turbines can’t function despite the fact that Scotland is also fucking windy (all the time), as attested to by Combat Controller and Doc Russia during a fall hunt in the Cairngorms.

I think that to be fair, it should have been mandated that fall-back protections for the turbines had to be powered not by diesel engines but by solar energy (something that Scotland does not have a lot of, at any time of year).

The only way we’re ever going to eliminate all this Green bullshit is if we constantly rub the Greens’ noses in the shit every single time their policies fail, and make them live with the consequences.