Mandating EVs in U.S. would require ’18 times current global production of cobalt…three quarters of lithium & half the world’s copper & rare earths. China dominates all these markets’

In 2018, about 5.1 million EVs were in use around the globe. That means that cutting domestic gasoline demand by a third would require the U.S. to deploy roughly 20 times as many EVs as are now being used around the world. That’s a tall order. … Richard Herrington, the head of earth sciences at the Natural History Museum in London, and seven of his colleagues sent a letter to the British government that underscored the scale of the challenge. Herrington and his colleagues calculated the amount of commodities, including rare earth elements, that would be needed to convert all the United Kingdom’s 31 million motor vehicles to electric drive. (Rare earths are a group of 17 elements that includes neodymium, an essential ingredient in electric motors.) They found that doing so would require “two times the total annual world cobalt production, nearly the entire world production of neodymium, three-quarters of the world’s lithium production and at least half of the world’s copper production during 2018.”

The U.S. has about 276 million registered motor vehicles, or roughly nine times as many vehicles as the U.K. Thus, if Herrington’s numbers are right, electrifying all of U.S. motor vehicles would require roughly 18 times the world’s current cobalt production, about nine times global neodymium output, nearly seven times global lithium production, and about four times world copper production.

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The Great Green Renewable Energy HOAX
Wind and sunshine are renewable and sustainable
Harnessing them to meet modern energy needs is NOT
Paul Driessen * Doctors for Disaster Preparedness * August 16, 2022

Driessen:

Wind and sunshine are absolutely clean, green, renewable and sustainable. However, harnessing wind and sunshine to meet modern energy needs absolutely is NOT. Wind turbines, solar panels, and electric car and truck and backup battery systems … are simply NOT clean, green, ecological, renewable or sustainable. 

You could make a case that they are all that … HERE, in the USA, where they are installed – if you ignore their huge impacts on scenery, habitats and wildlife, the health of people living near wind turbines, and numerous other harmful effects. 

BUT when you look at the total life cycles of wind, solar and battery power, those energy sources merely move the location of the dirty work … the air and water pollution, the greenhouse gas emissions, the even worse impacts on habitats, wildlife and people. 

Those impacts may be far away from us. But they are real. They mustn’t be ignored … even though they usually are ignored – even by politicians, colleges, government agencies and “stakeholder” groups that make lofty, moralizing “sustainability mission and values statements” … like this one: 

…

Where do we get all these wind turbines, solar panels, battery modules, transformers, transmission lines and electric replacement home appliances? It’s generally assumed they will just kind of … Be There.
The metals, minerals, plastics, concrete and other raw materials required to make all this equipment will likewise just … Be There.
My term for this little understood process is:
Materials Acquisition for Global Industrial Change
As before, you can easily remember the concept by using its acronym –
M-A-G-I-C …
21) MAGIC! And again, it really would require MAGIC to pull it off.
A recent International Energy Agency – IEA – report concludes that manufacturing all these fossil fuel replacement technologies would require: tens of billions of tons of non-renewable iron, copper, aluminum, cobalt, lithium, nickel, rare earth elements, plastics, concrete and other raw materials.
Getting them would require mining, crushing, processing, refining and transporting hundreds of billions of tons of ores – from thousands of mines and quarries – using explosives … and gigantic gasoline and diesel equipment.
These fuel-intensive activities often employ hazardous chemicals and release toxic pollutants. They require enormous volumes of water, often in the world’s most water-deprived regions.
22) They cause acid mine drainage, create mountains of waste rock, and generate vast “lakes” of toxic chemicals from refining the ores.
Technologies certainly exist to handle these problems – but they’re rarely utilized in these overseas operations, because laws governing those operations are generally well below US, European and Canadian standards … if they exist at all.
23) Wind, solar, battery and electric vehicle technologies require far more metals and minerals than their fossil fuel counterparts. Industry experts say electric cars and buses require three to ten times more copper than gasoline versions.
24) ONshore wind turbines need nine times more copper, concrete, steel and other materials per megawatt than a modern combined cycle gas-fired generating plant – to generate electricity 25-40 percent of the year … versus 90-95 percent of the year with gas-fired power plants.
Just one 3-megawatt wind turbine – like this one being installed on a West Virginia mountaintop – requires 600 cubic yards … 1,500 tons … of concrete – plus all that rebar … plus hundreds of tons of other materials.
OFFshore wind turbines require fourteen times more materials per megawatt than a combined cycle gas generating plant..
25) Just that initial Joe Biden offshore wind program – 30,000 megawatts … New York State summertime peak electricity needs – would require nearly 110,000 tons of copper, plus millions of tons of other materials.
At an average of 0.44 percent copper in all types of copper ore deposits around the world today, that means just those first couple thousand offshore wind turbines would require mining, crushing and processing … 25 million tons of copper ore … after removing some 40 million tons of overlying rock – overburden – just to reach the ore bodies.
26) That’s enough crushed rock to cover a 24-foot-wide highway ten feet deep … all the way from Washington, DC to Tampa, Florida! And that’s just for the copper! Just for the first 30,000 megawatts of offshore wind power.
Alternatively – even better – you could bury the Biden White House, Capitol Hill, all those climate-obsessed federal agencies, and all the Greenpeace, Sierra Club and other eco-pressure groups’ DC offices under a couple hundred feet of rock.
Add in materials for all those solar panels, onshore wind turbines, backup battery systems, subsea electrical cables, onshore transmission lines, electric vehicles, newly mandated electric ovens and heating systems, and other “green” technologies – to run the entire USA – and again, this is just for the United States
… and the “green energy transformation” would require tens of billions of tons of metals and minerals, trillions of tons of ores, trillions of tons of overburden, and thousands of mines, processing plants and factories … all over the planet.
With virtually all that work done using fossil fuels!
An American Green New Deal would require raw materials in excess of the entire world’s current and foreseeable mining and processing capabilities. A global Green New Deal would probably require mining the entire solar system.
27) So … Where will all these raw materials actually COME from?
It’s often assumed – or, more accurately, expected – that the United States can simply outsource all this mining and processing, without compromising our economic or national security … or our commitment to sustainability, environmental protection and human rights.

…

Even worse, even the most ardent Green New Deal proponents have made it clear that they will not tolerate more mining here in the USA, even for this planet-saving energy and economic transformation that they so devoutly intend to impose.
They intend to have nearly all Green New Deal metals and minerals extracted overseas, often by Chinese companies – which also control the processing of many minerals mined in Africa, Asia, Latin America and even the United States … and the manufacturing of increasing numbers of wind turbines, solar panels, batteries, transformers and other Green New Deal equipment.
In just the past couple years, Congress, courts, the Deep State and radical greens have prevented many critically needed mines from opening, including: Alaska’s Pebble Mine (billions of pounds of copper, gold, silver, molybdenum and other metals); Minnesota’s NorthMet mine (billions of pounds of copper, cobalt, platinum and nickel); and enormous lithium deposits right here in Nevada.
That means the United States would go from being a net exporter of oil, natural gas and refined products just a couple years ago – thanks largely to fracking –
to being almost totally dependent on often unfriendly foreign sources for the materials required for our energy, economy, manufacturing, living standards, healthcare, communication, transportation … and national defense … under a Green New Deal that would shut down most American manufacturing.
29) China and many of those other foreign suppliers rarely apply anything remotely approaching US laws and standards … for environmental protection, pollution control, mined land reclamation, endangered species protection, workplace safety, fair wages, child and slave labor, or other basic human rights.
ESG – Environmental, Social, Governance – and human rights activists demand all of this for clothing, coffee and fossil fuels … but not for “green” energy, because of course they are working to “save the planet” from “climate chaos.” So Third World lives don’t really matter much when it comes to “clean, renewable” energy.
30) Right now, some 40,000 children as young as four already labor with their parents in Democratic Republic of Congo cobalt mines, for a few dollars a day, under constant threats of cave-ins … and with constant exposure to toxic and radioactive air, mud, dust and water … just to meet today’s cobalt needs, for cell phone, laptop and electric vehicle batteries.
Those cobalt needs would skyrocket under any Green New Deal. Even just a US Green New Deal.
The cobalt ore is sent to China for processing in plants with equally abominable safety and pollution conditions. Air and water pollution from the plants has been linked to alarming cancer, blood disease and other health problems.
31) Air pollution and an enormous toxic waste dump for effluents from rare earth mining and processing in China’s Inner Mongolia region have destroyed agriculture and created similar health issues for plant workers and local residents.
China also uses Uyghur slave labor to manufacture solar panels that are being sold to the United States. Memo to John Kerry and Larry Fink: This is not “responsible outsourcing.”
China increasingly wields its energy, mineral and economic power as a weapon, to keep its client countries like the USA dependent and subservient.
That brings us to another vitally important question:
Will anyone in their right mind really follow America’s Green New Deal leadership?

…

These countries are also using fossil fuels to conduct the mining, processing and manufacturing that America refuses to do – but are essential for Green New Deal transformations. That work cannot be done without fossil fuels.

That means any American “wrenching energy transformation” would simply transfer emission sources, emissions, and other ecological and human health impacts … from the United States to these other countries.

That means, even if the United States completely eliminated its fossil fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions, there would be no global emission benefits from doing so. In fact, global emissions would continue going up, up up!

It means, even if plant-fertilizing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases actually do drive climate change, there would be no climate benefits – zero, zip, nada … or as they say in Russian, nichevo … or in Mandarin, meiyou.

35) In fact, over the past decade, the United States significantly reduced its carbon dioxide emissions, largely by replacing coal-fired electricity generation with natural gas. 

But meanwhile, in 2020 alone, China put 38,000 megawatts of new coal-fired power plants into operation. The Middle Kingdom relies on coal for 60 percent of its electricity needs.

China’s government has told its coal companies to increase output by 300 million more tons this year. It sure doesn’t sound to me like China is “decarbonizing.” 

36) Beijing is also building, planning or financing more than 300 coal plants in Africa, Turkey, Vietnam, Indonesia and other nations 

India too is using far more coal, oil, natural gas, gasoline and diesel. 

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