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Bolivia Is the Saudi Arabia of Lithium
tcd004 writes "You can literally scrape valuable lithium off the ground of many Bolivian salt flats. The country is poised to be the center of world lithium battery production, reaping the benefit of the metal's skyrocketing value. 'The US Geological Survey says 5.4 million tons of lithium could potentially be extracted in Bolivia, compared with 3 million in Chile, 1.1 million in China and just 410,000 in the United States. ... Ailing automakers in the United States are pinning their hopes on lithium. General Motors next year plans to roll out its Volt, a car using a lithium-ion battery along with a gas engine. Nissan, Ford and BMW, among other carmakers, have similar projects.' However, the government fears foreign countries might exploit their natural resources, so for the time being, the salt flats remain untouched."
"The previous imperialist model of exploitation of our natural resources will never be repeated in Bolivia," said Saul Villegas, head of a division in Comibol that oversees lithium extraction. "Maybe there could be the possibility of foreigners accepted as minority partners, or better yet, as our clients."
Well, I'm glad somebody's thinking with their head.
I also hope that money goes towards improving their infrastructure and fostering internal business instead of some bullshit palace for some bullshit dictator. All too often third world countries squander their resources on some nationalistic project in their capital or some aggressive military campaign when they don't even have electricity, utilities, law enforcement or running water in half their country.
Neither articles seemed to mention much about pollution. I also hope that they move forward with the caution of the scars of pollution that mining has left on other countries--even Canada. My coworker once commented at lunch (around the time of the Olympics) that we aren't exporting jobs or industry to China but rather just our pollution. Because it's cheaper to pollute there and the government doesn't care. Take precautions, Bolivia, develop standards now! Don't squander your resources!
My work here is dung.
I am actually very aware of strip mining practices. My father actually works at one, funnily enough. It was a matter of economics and not ideals which is rather disheartening, but we had mountains of debt and there aren't exactly a lot of good paying jobs to go around. Moral of the story, take care of natural resources on lands so people aren't left with tough decisions of supporting a family or soul-crushing environmental destruction like my dad was.
I got a catholic block.
Fuel cells suck. Barring true nanotechnology (as in, molecular assembly) they will probably always be energy-intensive to produce. Batteries suck, too. In fact, everything is pretty lame if you have very high expectations. In the mean time, try only to realize that hybrid cars are total boondoggles which consume vastly more energy in production to give you less mileage for more money than just buying a car with a small turbo diesel engine; meanwhile diesel has more energy than gasoline, and takes less non-free energy to produce, especially if you talk about biofuels but even when talking about dino juice. We need full-electrics so we can centralize power generation, and we need batteries which are at least twice as good as what we have now (as in, twice as favorable a price:performance ratio) in order to make them feasible for the mass market. Fuel cells are also disadvantaged because liquid fuel is harder to transport than electricity. Their only real benefit today is refueling time.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"