“Sacrifice Zones” The Blind Spots of the Green Energy Transition - BSC 2022

Take into consideration the fact that an electric vehicle involves 10 times the mining to extract all of the required minerals to make it and it takes a huge amount of fossil fuels in order to perform this extraction. Approximately 500,000 tons of aggregate has to be mined in order to produce the minerals needed to make an electric battery. If you do the math, you see that by the time the EV is built, it has already generated as much as 50% of the CO2 that an ICE vehicle will generate in its lifetime. When you factor in the fact that EVs are only as good for the environment from a CO2 perspective as their energy sources are and that ICE vehicle motors can be recycled efficiently at a profit whereas EV battery recycling is resource intensive at best and questionable at worst and can't be done at a profit, you quickly realize that the overall benefit is not what its trumped up to be. I have seen estimates that the reduction in CO2 generation, if the world's fleet of car and light trucks were converted to EVs, would be anywhere from 10% to -10%. Lets forget for the moment that it would take decades, if not a century, to increase mining efforts by a factor of 10. There is the very real possibility that if we go down this EV road that in 50 years or so we will not only have made little difference to CO2 emissions, we may have increased them. Not to mention the fact that the use of fossil fuels will have increased right along with those efforts. The end result, unless Nuclear is widely used, will be that we will not have impacted our CO2 emission levels in any significant way and that they will still be higher than today. That's has to be a sobering reality for any alarmist.

This discussion exemplifies renewable’s’ Elephant in the room. Namely that Nuclear is the near zero carbon solution with minimal environmental disruption compared to ‘renewables’. Today’s new 3rd and 4th generation designs are passively (inherently) safe and increasingly faster and more affordable to build. Without military-style urgency of a Nuclear ramp up there is simply no way of avoiding well over 1.5 degrees of global warming within two decades. By then, positive feedback takes over at an apocalyptic pace. I’m now 70 and won’t see the worst of it. Hopefully my deluded years of voting ‘green’ won’t seriously affect my next incarnation.

Thinking that renewable matters at all is a mistake. The goals should be energy security, affordability, and environmental protection without regard to being called RE or not. Unfortunately, many equate being called RE with being better for humanity and the environment. Sometimes it is. Sometimes, it's not. As long as energy policy is driven by RE ideology, we are not able to critically examine our options and are not making the best choices.

Nobel Prize winner William Nordhaus In a January 2020 interview with Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Nordhaus claimed that achieving the 2 °C goal of the Paris agreement was "impossible", stating that, "even if we make the fastest possible turn towards zero emissions, CO2 will continue to accumulate in the atmosphere, because we cannot simply shut down our economy". He asserted that he was not alone in making this assessment, claiming that half of the simulation arrived at the same conclusion. He also remarked that the two-degree target was set without reference to the costs of meeting the target.[26][27] Nordhaus is correct. We should focus on adaptation. Of course this won't happen because too many carpet baggers are stealing too much money from taxpayers via the great subsidized "renewables" (they aren't renewable) gold rush.

unfortunately they all conveniently side stepped the main issue which is the increasing cost of extracting these minerals from increasingly lower grade ores this requires mining more ore and crushing it down to 100 microns to extract tiny amounts of the mineral copper is down to 0.1% which means one tonne of ore produces one kilogram of copper and global demand is 28 million tonnes that is a loyt of mining all of which has to be done with diesel machines

She described current global temperature as a function of global warming models, rather than as a record of actual temperature observations.

"We all know it will be dirty business" Good talk, and frames the conversation well.... But sounds to me like the beginning of the 20th century with a quickly rising geo strategic tensions competing for critical resources and we all know how that turned out .... 😢

It's a joke to not consider nuclear if we expect the same standard of energy supply.

Where I agree w/ Olivia is that mining is an industry that indeed disturb the sediments from which the ores are retrieved. Some of the processes involved in separation of ores from unwanted stuff involve use of elements that allow stuff to sink to the bottom. Now w/ traditional oil, oil is confined to sandstone/limestone/salt dome formations & electro-conductivity tests are used to scout out those rock layers.

Odd that a conference discussing how industry should best be used to extract minerals essential to remediating the catastrophic effects of climate change, would not include any industry representatives. It's almost as if the organizers and participants don't want to discover any workable solutions.

How is Blackrock and other financial conglomerates motivated by ESG involved in the failure of the green energy transition? Are they playing both ends against the middle? How transparent are Blackrock's financial dealings? For that matter, how transparent are the finances of the participants in the Belgrade Security Conference? How do we know they don't have direct, or even indirect economic interests in the corporations receiving government or other institutional funding?

small nuclear is the answer ,not windmills and solar for most population s

These minerals are the new oil, and looks like we have not learned a thing ... The same thinking that brought us the problems are about to continue and accelerate... And listening to these people except for the first woman seem not to understand the dynamics unfolding... Its totally naive to think that huge conflict are not coming and huge environmetal destruction isn't virtually guranteed as the scale of the issues sink in and panic to gain access and produce the required volumes of all these minerals grows ... Because no one has even mentioned how large the demand will become versus the resource base. These conversations need to be had in context of the total scale of the demand ....

2:36 / 1:04:23 through to 18:07 / 1:04:23 what we thought was a green, soft, fluffy idea… has become new geo political struggle to control resources and production chains of materials required to implement green tec. Whether players believe in carbon reduction or not, this still represents opportunity to control, manipulate and profit in a new, booming market Russia is creating misinformation info bubbles. And using Wagner as cheap interference in countries with fragile institutions and a weak state capacity

The opportunity for a relatively smooth transition to a low carbon evonomy was missed 40 years ago, and there is now no painless way out of the climate crisis, and despite multiple governments commtments, atmospheric CO2 is still increasing. Are we collectively too stupid to survive?

Dear climate apologists, Most people would not object to additions and options to existing energy infrastructure. However, the current approach in general is toxic to human society in many ways. First of all, if you talk to people about this subject or anything else, be respectful. Secondly, you cannot change overnight what has been building for more than a century, no matter how frightened you feel. You have got to allow questions and opposing views if any of the climate goals are going to have more support. You cannot treat people like a disease and then wonder why they won't listen to your views. Science has dissenting views on this as on many other topics. So take the foot off the gas and remember how to relate to people. Control only ends up being counterproductive. Try respect, you might find that other people aren't as dumb as you thought. Try conversing, and then understand you can't control others. So if you think oil is bad don't use any. If you think air conditioning is wrong get rid of it. You can be an example instead of looking like a hypocrite. Thanks a lot!

Huge hidden costs not accounted for: One subsidy dollar takes about $20 in economic activity to generate which in turn produces 20 times more carbon. Also to give out tax dollars an equal tax or inflation must also be compensated by increased production. Higher prices also produce vast amounts of carbon. Nukular and geothermal produce much less carbon unless subsidies or higher prices are incurred. We now have much better drilling and reactor techniques.

It’s ironic that she notes the power play around competition for resources, to creat “clean tech” (which doesn’t really exist) but not the power play and premise that there’s a climate issue to begin with. If there’s no climate issue. Who is using the false flag of climate to gain power and why?

You might like some perspective https://youtu.be/-EHCguJp9eQ?t=216

I think we need to really think mining in space and put more development into that direction. Earth mining is a no no if we want to keep going the way we are . It might seem far-fetched, but it's the only future for the green revolution. The focus of the next generation will have to be space . The way it's going is not sustainable for the future .