Watch this telltale story from NBC News, at first glance, about the unfortunate but necessary environmental costs of “clean energy.” Within an internationally recognized “biosphere reserve” no less, established “because of its potential to showcase the co-existence of sustainable development and protection of the environment.”
Tesla’s Elon Musk can barely hold back laughter as he cajoles the mining industry to give him more nickel, promising to return the favor with “a giant contract for a long period of time if you mine nickel efficiently and [with his words hurried] in an environmentally sensitive way.”
Jose Baylon, vice president of The Nickel Asia Corporation is eager. He will expand mining on the Pacific island destroying more pristine rainforest. “Is it your feeling that we simply have to trade off some bits of our planet in order to have the life we want to build?”asks NBC. Mr. Baylon replies emphatically, “Yes…human development has been a series of tradeoffs over the years.”
That may sound fine and reasonable if destroying “some bits” of nature is pretty much all we’ve ever done, motivated purely in pursuit of a decent and responsible life.
But back in the real world, global demand for nickel will surge an astounding tenfold in the next decade to help an overgrown civilization churn out countless electronic gadgets, jet engines, solar panels, wind turbines, and, yes, electric cars. Mass production, consumption, shipping, and disposal of nickel as well as lithium, cobalt, manganese, bauxite, copper, silver, and gold sets the stage for another generation of environmental tragedies hidden under the mantas of sustainable development and fighting climate change. As is generally the case, nature and people closest to the earth are first to go under in this latest industrial frenzy.
NBC ends the video with a perfunctory “stark reminder that even clean energy comes with an environmental cost.” Gee, too bad. Who would have ever guessed?
I find this story profoundly ridiculous, and the actors half amusing, given that nothing grows indefinitely while being “environmentally-sensitive” along the way.
For a more details on what resource exploitation is doing to the ecology and people of the South Pacific, check out this article in The Guardian. NBC also released a written fuller account of this story.
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Tony, looks like it’s hopeless, sorry to say. To get people to stop shopping, eating, consuming. We seem to be on a collision course with a brick wall called natural law.
Nickel Mining spokesperson Mr. Baylon states emphatically, “Yes [we must destroy rainforest]. Human development has been a series of tradeoffs over the years.” Tradeoffs? Incorrect. A trade-off is "A BALANCE achieved between two desirable but incompatible features; a compromise." We have not made tradeoffs. We have plundered. Flat out plundered natural resources in search of profit. Time to down-size the human effort!