I choose preservation as well, of course. Conservation.
However I am also concerned that, more than gold, lithium is what some of these companies may be after.
As I understand it, the two most often used methods of extracting lithium from the ground are:
1)pumping water underground so the lithium froths us to the top (for oil they call it fracking, but since lithium goes in electric cars, they dont call it that)
2) strip mining.
People want thier electric cars, right? Clean energy, they say...clean for who?
Cape Wind, a green energy windmill project started in 2001 to place turbines in the Nantucket Sound, has been opposed by every Kennedy and yachting partner since day 1. Even when they went through every permitting g process and won in state supreme court...They finally gave up in 2017, having erected zero turbines. It was less than 5 miles off the mainland, between Hyannis and Nantucket. It would have been visible from the Kennedy compound in Hyannis...what chance did it have? One of the Kennedy clan wrote a piece in a paper, stating support for green energy but not "this project."
i.e. "NIMBY".
Enter Vinyard Wind. Same idea, but not off Hyannis. Not in the sound between the mainland and Nantucket. No. THIS one is 14 miles SOUTH of the island, out in the open ocean. And it is still being opposed, ostensibly for the protection of the Right Whale. Ok. Like I said, i believe in conservation. But it just seems theres nothing we can do that us clean enough or safe enough.
Please dont read this as support for this gold-strip mining. It isnt. I look at the Berkeley Pit in East Butte Montana. Strip mining was supposed to be the safer alternative to digging unstable shafts in the ground and lowering people in.
The idea that shaft mining is romantic is akin to taking a transatlantic trip in a wooden boat. We just wouldnt do that anymore, and probably shouldnt., should we?
But since I was a kid, they've been talking about the "greenhouse effect" as they used to call it, and they've been pushing electric cars and solar and wind energy.
I'm genuinely wondering how exactly we are supposed to generate even renewable energy If the devices we invent for gathering it ruin the view of terrain and are opposed at all sides.
