Will using electric cars instead of fossil fuel cars actually do anything?
Originally posted on Quora May 25, 2023
It will push the demand for land consumption from one extractive industry (drilling) to another (mining) and will overall require more land consumption that will inevitably lead to land conflicts in the global south with clear winners and losers. This has already happened around the world: from the unlawful rare earth metal mines in Myanmar to the unlawful cooper mines on tribal land in Peru and nickel mines in Indonesia small hold farmers and traditional societies are being displaced and often evicted from their homeland to meet the growing demand for batteries and their components.
For instance, China largely outsourced their rare earth metal mining from their Jinxing province to the military Junta of Myanmar where villages were forced to concede land and water rights at gun point. Even if they were to get this land it would be uninhabitable due to the toxic remnants of Ammonium sulfate used in the mining process. As it stands, Myanmar is China’s largest source of rare earths. The demand for rare earth metals is expected to triple by 2035.
"Clean" Energy Industries Now Depend On Illegal and Toxic Rare Earth Mines in Military Dictatorship
Forceful land grabs for strip mining have occurred in places as far flung as Peru and Indonesia precipitated by the surging global demand for copper and nickel. The demand for copper alone will surge 50% by 2040 about 4% per year for transportation and only 1.5% per year for construction and manufacturing of heating and cooling equipment. By 2030, copper demand is expected to outstrip supply by 6 million tons per year and recycled copper will not be nearly enough reach an equilibrium.
This is What Will Happen to Traditional Societies in The Race for Green Energy Metals
The principal financiers of this massive land theft that capitalizes on the weak and often non-existent property rights in the third world are the same Davos Clique parties steering the “clean energy” transition."
How the WEF and World Bank Facilitate Land Theft for Factory Farms and Green Energy Tech
Of course, the massive land theft isn’t limited to the mining for battery components but extends to other “green energy” production such as biofuels, wind turbines and hydroelectric damns.
Green Energy Industries May Endanger Indigenous Societies
The realization that there will be winners and losers in the competition for scarce resources, principally land, isn’t novel or shocking to anyone not brainwashed by the clean/green energy marketing scam. While the left likes to drone on about the past atrocities of colonialism the inevitability of it predates recorded history itself. Modern humans drove several other hominid species to extinction to become the dominate animal on earth. The current predicament is no different. While traditional societies have customary rights to 50% of the earth’s surface the governments of the nation states in which they reside only recognize their rights to 10% of the earth and since these nation states also tend to have weak and often non-existent property right protections these land conflicts will only metastasize.
There will undoubtedly also be winners and losers at the nation state level and the US under its current leadership is poised to be that loser. Not only does China have a virtual monopoly on rare earths mining (63% of global market) and processing (85% of global market), through five state owned companies, but their outsized presence in South America has eclipsed the US especially in the 3 countries that control 56% of the global supply of lithium (Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile) and 90% of the US supply of lithium. As it stand China is South America’s largest trading partner and their influence over the continent is only projected to grow larger in the coming decades. China is beating the US in Africa too.