Electric cars, not so green after all
(Should read: Battery Only Electric Cars, Not So Green After All)
By Laura Millan Lombrana, Bloomberg
Tesla Motors and General Motors’ Chevrolet are preparing to bring out mass-market electric cars next year. If you plan to buy one and help save the planet, people who live near the Atacama salt flat ask that you spare a thought for the flamingos.
The vehicles will be powered by rechargeable batteries containing lithium, a silver-white metal found in brine deposits under the world’s driest desert in northern Chile. The 1,200-square-mile Salar de Atacama is also known for wild flamingos, who feed and breed in its lagoons. Some locals say that miners sucking water out of the earth to get to the lithium are starving the long-legged birds in the process.
A worker cleans a pipe at a brine pool of the Rockwood lithium plant on the Atacama salt flat. Photograph: Ivan Alvarado/Reuters
“They are pumping up an absurd amount of water,” says Rolando Humire Coca, a biochemist who heads the Naturalist Society of San Pedro de Atacama and is a member of Chile’s National Institute for Human Rights. “If they keep using the same methods to extract water, the consequences will be disastrous. All forms of life will be destroyed.”
Satellite images indicate that some lagoons and meadows in the salt flat are shrinking or drying up, while the Chilean Forestry Commission has recorded a drop in the flamingo population. A parliamentary commission set up this year to look into the depletion of water resources across the country has yet to draw any tie to the lithium miners, leaving it to the local community to try and drum up interest in the fate of the flamingos.
The activists have asked the congressional commission for more research into the impact on water resources as they see their ancient way of life disappearing, while the companies say their own monitoring systems show little to no impact...snip
Read More: http://buenosairesherald.com/article/218050/electric-cars-not-so-green-after-all
The good stuff: a worker showing a sample of lithium carbonate processed from the Rockwood Lithium mine. Photograph: Ivan Alvarado/Reuters
UK Guardian: How South America's lithium triangle is gearing up to feed our battery addiction
23 March 2016: ‘White petroleum’ powers everything from electric cars to mobile phones, and half the earth’s resources come from the salt flats of Chile, Argentina and Bolivia
Far from the soy and cattle that dominate its vast fertile pampas, Argentina harbours another valuable commodity that is rocketing in price and demand and luring newly welcomed foreign investors.
Lithium, the so-called “white petroleum”, drives much of the modern world. It forms a small but essentially irreplaceable component of rechargeable batteries, used in consumer devices like mobile phones and electric cars. It also has pharmaceutical and other applications. Over half of the earth’s identified resources of the mineral are found in South America’s “lithium triangle”, an otherworldly landscape of high-altitude lakes and bright white salt flats that straddles Chile, Argentina and Bolivia...
...Chile, though, is popular with investors for its free market credentials, while the dry desert climate is “perfect” for lithium production, said Brian Jaskula, a US Geological Survey mineral commodity specialist. The key lithium site in Chile is the vast Salar de Atacama salt flat, where local firm SQM and foreign-owned Rockwood have operations. SQM was privatised in the 1980s during General Augusto Pinochet’s regime and a former son-in-law of the late dictator owns a controlling stake. But it is on uneasy terms with the current leftist government. In the last two years, it has run foul of authorities over market manipulation and dubious tax invoices, and is in arbitration with economic development agency Corfo over royalties...snip
Read More: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/mar/23/battery-lithium-south-america-chile-argentina-bolivia
This article doesn't even mention the fact that most people charging their battery only electric cars are using electrons generated by burning coal.
Hydrogen > Lithium Batteries. Greener, cleaner and you don't need to pump water out of salt flats
= new reply since forum marked as read
