The world needs clean power, but decarbonization calls for a massive increase in the mining and extraction of minerals like lithium, graphite and cobalt. Environmental peacemaking expert Olivia Lazard sheds light on the scramble for these precious mineral resources — and how the countries that control their supply chains (including China and Russia) could find themselves at the center of the new global stage. Learn why Lazard thinks planetary security depends on our ability to de-escalate resource competition and avoid the same mistakes that led to the climate crisis.
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37 Comments
Carbon fuel. Hydrogen and nuclear power. Dont mine.its not green. Electric cars are not green. Dirty battery's.
More European theft and begging for resources so Europeans can continue to steal from the rest of the world .. No more … European colonialism must finally end.
This was a great geopolitical speech on globalization and control i.e. E.S.G. So I have a good understanding on the plan for controlling our our money,
But to me, it’s putting the cart before the horse.
Show us the plan for zero carbon electricity for every country. What about zero carbon mining equipment for all these rare minerals not to mention, zero carbon trains, planes, and automobiles, tractors, semi trucks.
But there’s no plan there never was one, they want to control the people and their money first and they’ll keep scaring everybody until their plan doesn’t work.
Unfortunately, it won’t be in my lifetime, but one day the real science will show that CO2 it’s not some big giant gas thermostat that is controlling the world temperature, weather patterns, sea level.
Our only hope the government also funds the science that are not allowed to show their work because it doesn’t align with IPCC. And lift the restraints on innovators in the free market.
One needs to remember Einstein's theory on the conservation of energy. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, only changed from one form to another. This is very true, and we must realize what the results of this transfromation will be. We may have negative effects from the use of fossil fuels, but we will also have negative effects from the use of renewables. It will take centuries to see these effects, good luck on this utopian dream.
Not a single mention of nuclear. And I heard nothing on when groups will act in their own self interests at the expense of other groups, how – specifically – you propose to curb that. Weak.
What you want ain't going to happen.
Battery chemistries are not fixed. You can drive the cobalt content down substantially. Lithium processing can be done in the US. And permanent magnets can be made with much less rare earths. It’s already happening. This woman is the Paul Ehrlich of climate policy.
Sounds like it damned-if-you-do
Damned-if-you-don't
😢
Green has turned radical BLUE!
"Global Public Good Regime" – how naïve it is…
The reality is that the energy transition need to go through 3 phases. 1 – modest growth in non-fossil fuel energy along side fossil fuel energy, 2- once sufficient electrical energy is available to meet current needs plus new demand (especially from EVs), then continued growth of non-fossil energy and decline in non-fossil fuels. 3 – Massive uptake of low metal intensity energy and energy storage solutions in fuel (not yet in existence) and cessation of non-fossil fuels.
This will not take a single decade but more like 50 years or more.
"Decarbonization is our future. Not a single doubt allowed about this." That's not science that's dogma. Carbon is not our enemy. Diversification of energy sources is the workable way forward. If there's anything we need to resolve it's EMR (electro-magnetic radiation) pollution which is most harmful to the environment.
Where is the goose that laid the egg sown at 2:30
I've been an advocate for "green" energy since the 70s. A problem is coupling the output of renewable energy to the input of material sourcing and manufacturing and waste reclamation. Another problem is current tech doesn't really scale. We need new tech.
As to the global distribution of power, quit being a lefty. Government has always done the bidding of finance. Finance is not centered geographically. It is already distributed. The wealthy elite are hand in glove, and the big problems that face us are them fighting among themselves for larger shares of the pie.
I lived in West Texas for two decades. I have witnessed the transition from oil and gas to renewable. The corporations controlling and benefiting from renewables are the same corporations who controlled and benefitted from oil and gas.
Where was the 'blind spot?'
Not like these issues aren't known or attempts aren't being made to alleviate (or, preferably, eliminate) them.
Doing nothing is a choice, and likely a fatal one…
It’s amazing that someone so connected to the status quo, can only see the future in terms of the past. There’s zero chance that the global power structure can/will allow sovereign governments to restrict the supply of critical materials without war. The great African tribesman said, “…he who has salt, also has war”.
Here’s an idea worth spreading, “ let’s eliminate the need for energy… by design”!!!
History is a cycle of civilizations coming & going.
Ours is the next to go.
Too many problems from money to energy and more.
very great insights. thanks for video.
very critical facts.
And that is why we need a new format of relations – Creative Society instead of the consumerist approach
She demonstrates a number of additional huge blind spots herself: First, if you quantify the mineral and infrastructure needs required to follow a radical "green" energy strategy we have nowhere near the mineral capacity to meet the need for solar, wind, and battery technology even with massive increases in extraction so severe global conflict for resources is inevitable. Since China has such a huge monopoly on the needed resources, and are a totalitarian regime with the goal of world domination, this bodes poorly for worldwide human rights. Countries that resist or support human rights will be crushed and starved of hi tech resources to run their energy sector. Second blindspot: she makes no mention of nuclear energy as an eventual energy component – it is the only technology that scales to meet future energy needs, especially if you recognize the legitimate needs of developing countries, and is much less dependent on the rare earth minerals required for solar and battery tech. Liquid salt reactors are much safer for the environment, and much safer in general compared to legacy nuclear technology. Third blindspot: a global regime that manages mineral extraction is a fantasy – it will be China who calls the shots, to everyone's detriment. Lastly, the whole transition situation is exacerbated by the false urgency of the phony climate crisis. If we allow a reasonable timeframe e.g.100 years, to make the transition to new energy sources including nuclear, we can do an orderly transition and avoid massive conflict. We have the fossil fuel reserves to get us through that kind of transition, and by doing so avoid the artificial mineral and energy scarcities that will drive global war. Because in fact he rate of climate change is slow (look at the numbers) it does not justify this panicked green response.Even if we were able to make this massive shift to renewable energy, it would have a negligible impact on current warming trends (again look at the quantitative data). If we follow the climate crisis delusion we are inflicting a massive unforced error on the planet and human population. IT DOES NOT HAVE TO BE THIS WAY.. Instead slow the energy transition, allow time for the development of a nuclear/solar/wind solution, build out a resilient global power grid, reap the benefits of global warming (a much greener planet, higher crop yields, warmer winters, more rainfall) and avoid a massive mineral resource crisis that would lead to ecological disaster and worldwide war and human rights abuse.
No mention of the the biggest "blind spot" of all — overpopulation!
Her talk gives obvious reasons why the long term shift to EVs ain't gonna happen…Hundreds of millions of cars, trucks, tractors, ships, heavy machinery and trains worldwide that already run on fossil fuels are not gonna be replaced by electric vehicles. It won't happen because of simple economics… In fact, sometime in the next 20 years all the Teslas ever built will either be decomposing in junkyards or have been scrapped for materials. I know this is hard for many of you people to understand but oil is here to stay until the oil powered system becomes more expensive than an electric system. This is reality….Why do you think Buffet is buying Occidental Petroleum Stock and not Tesla Stock? He knows there's no real future in EVs
The conundrum is evaporated instantly when true science is finally deployed to prove that rise in CO2 does not raise global temperatures over long geological cycles and the only requirement for a “Green” future is focus on eliminating real pollution which CO2 in itself is not, but rather an essential molecule to sustain vegetation, without which all that depends on it on the Planet WILL die.
THAT is the real blind spot.
Climate change is climate change, not climate disaster. I applaud Olivia's addressing the mineral and mining aspects of the green transition, as it is called, but take issue with her numbers as to the amounts of these materials needed. In some instances, important instances, the increase will be closer to seven thousand percent increase.
China will not be able to handle the processing of these materials indefinitely, either. We all know of course that their demographics are atrocious but it is the details of that demographic collapse which are most alarming: of the more than 100 million people that China over counted and which they have admitted to recently, ALL of them would have been aged forty and under. This means that China is running rapidly out of consumers and workers. The countryside is stripped bare of new populations because of the great migration of the last thirty years so they cannot simply call up new workers from the hinterlands any more. China has 1.3 billion old people. That is something of an exaggeration but it conveys the point. Humans do not have an economic model to predict what happens when a population of that size ages into oblivion while carrying the weight of so much of the world's low and mid level manufacturing. It is a train wreck of mammoth size in slow motion. Get some popcorn.
The green transition will not take place in anything like the time frames bandied about by climate alarmists. The most fundamental reason is that the technology to do it at scale is not only not in the prototype stage, it is that the technology simply does not exist on any scale, even experimental. Olivia points out one area of the most glaring obstacle to "clean" energy: you have to have a lot of stuff, that stuff comes from a lot of places that do not have stable governance, is processed in a place that is approaching a cliff in terms of its existential future. Geopolitical future? Very few developed nations have any. France has a future as the center of Europe (less the Nordic states) and has a stable demography. Sweden has a stable demography. New Zealand has a stable demography. And the United States has a stable demography. That's it. That's all of us. The green transition is about to be subsumed into a fragmenting global picture in which China, India, the Arab states and a few others will attempt to create a shared hegemony independent of the United States and Europe not out of any hatred, but out of recognition of the fact that the U.S. Navy is no longer guaranteeing their safety on the high seas and that they are vulnerable to sanctions as well. It is an ill fated coalition. The U.S. has pulled the plug on China and they're going away despite what you see in their propaganda.
Europe is going away as a union. The EU will not survive the next ten years as we now know it. Germany's manufacturing base was fatally wounded in the destruction of Nordstream. France continues doing the weird things France does. Great Britain still hasn't figured out what a post Brexit world looks like from their perspective, and will consequently likely end up as a junior partner in NAFTA II.
South America will have to figure out what they want to look like. China has been investing heavily in soft power in that region but we already know that China's days are numbered. They are beyond help. It's a matter of whether South American nations individually want to hitch their wagon to a dying authoritarian state or a liberal democracy.
That leaves North America. We are broadly immune to the pressures of energy and food insecurity. We have vast resources, more internal navigable waterways than the rest of the world combined, far more arable land than we really know what to do with, and plenty of fertilizer to avoid the massive famine that will stalk parts of South America, the Middle East, and much of Asia in the coming few years.
Green transition? We don't really have time for that stuff right now. Spend the next decade developing the technology that can be used at scale and when this massive storm has passed, we can talk. Until then, take a number and take a seat because there are much bigger problems on the horizon.
I agree with all her geopolitical concerns about unintended consequences IF we continue to try building EV's that rely on cobalt etc, but the reality is the world is moving away from rare earth's due to price – and EV's now can use LFP, sodium, and are working towards aluminium-graphene (or probably aluminium-hemp!) or aluminium-sulfur. These resources are SUPER-abundant. She needs to revisit her primary assumptions about renewable technology.
"European Union relies on China for 98% of its rare earth metals." Yikes
Very telling about the actual plans for globalization and the Big Reset from the perspective of the Green movement/perspective, once you translate the nice phrases on the final slides into plain English. One important thing that was not mentioned directly but implied is an abrupt reduction in population as the most effective approach to decrease pressure on energy demand, supply chains, etc.
We measure a well know technology that has been around for more than 100 years with a new one that hit the market just 10-15 years ago and has a rapid evolution no where close to the existing one. We already have launched batteries that don't need most of materials mentioned and others that are 99.9% recyclable and don't even need earth mining the Sodium ion battery already in production. It all comes to what our goal is the solutions are already in market the whole point is if we want huge profits or a bright future.
We need more carbon (plant food) not less. What we need is energy. Decarbonization has nothing to do with it. Of the 16 minerals needed for alternative non-oil energy, it will take hundreds of years of oil (mining and transportation) intensive extraction to get those 16 minerals – an impossibility. The Green Future is physically impossible. CO2 is an insignificant greenhouse gas (0.04% of the atmosphere) being used as a red herring to misdirect so the power players can have their way. 95% of the five greenhouse gasses are water vapor (clouds). They don't tell you that because it's not human-caused, so they can't manipulate your behavior with fear.
CO2 has historically been from 200 PPM to 8000 PPM. CO2 is now at 415 PPM. It becomes toxic at 45,000 PPM. Furthermore, CO2 and warming have zero correlation. But warming, which is very minor and not a problem – is a net benefit to life and plants (food). We need more warming and more CO2 (the real green revolution) but neither can be controlled by the special interests, so they lie to you. Kinda like pharma saying there are no cures for any disease so they can push their patented drugs that do not work (but are always highly profitable).
We should be spending intellect building super efficient engines that we can share with the world so that the world can be pollute less at a global level.
I disagree with the basic premise. Fossil fuels also go by the name mineral fuels. So no, future is not more mineral intensive.
The green governments ignore the work and pollution required to service their green debt and extra spending. Likely it would make every project a failure
Always looking to get more. Never looking to use less.
Solution could be an independant AI goverment that takes all these factors into consideration and to which all humanity listens. An AI king for the planet that could tell us what to do to live better without falling victim of independant national interests. I think that's the next evolutionary step for humanity.
I wonder if she realized that she just advocated for the idea of resource based economy, an idea, which was popularized about more than a decade ago by humble film maker called Peter Joseph. I for one, ever since then, convinced that this is the plan that makes sense, and most probably works. It may very well could be the only way out from our predicament.
Some very good points. I will say that we will may jump from the frying pan into the fire if we are looking to some huge global organization to help us through these issues. Science? If we are speaking of actual science where dissenting opinions are welcomed and debated. Then we can look to science for guidance. She mentioned concerning decarbonization at about the 13:00 frame that "there is not single doubt allowed about this". Allowed by Who? Does science allow things to become facts or are they just facts. Who determines "Global Public Good"? Innovation comes from people who are allowed to pursue ideas and put them into practical and useful forms. Bureaucracies have never been successful at innovation. If they were the Soviet Union would be the sole world power. She brings up some good points that we need to consider. We also need to recognize, if the world is not careful we will hand China the reins of energy that will usher in what could be the darkest age of human history. We are playing for keeps here. We can be reminded of the words of Plato, "Only the dead have seen the end of war".