In another head scratcher, the Biden admin seems adamant on rushing through a set of protections for land in the vicinity of Death Valley. While I get the sentiment, continuing to yank back areas from mineral development after they become interesting for commercial development makes it impossible for mining companies to justify doing any exploration in the US. The US seems hellbent on outsourcing the development of critical mineral supply chains to other countries, where the Chinese will undoubtedly influence the outcome.
Posted by ElonIsMyDaddy420
3 Comments
Lithium/Geothermal is better suited for the Salton Sea, but I agree we should be maximalizing our opportunities here.
Ironically the Biden administration didn’t give Imperial County a single fucking grant for lithium extraction/geothermal even though it is an economically disadvantaged, heavily Hispanic community with unique geology where you can have safe, clean, unlimited GHG electricity from geothermal plants, extract lithium GHG free from the same brine used to power the generating plants, and then use the electricity to run battery factories on-site. Its a fucking UNICORN site and the Biden administration couldn’t throw a cent their way.
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America isn’t actually blessed by natural resources. Europe actually has oil, for example, but unlike Texas they have banned fracking it.
But America historically had a permissive economy that allowed people who find valuable minerals to mine them out of the ground and sell them. That in turn fuels speculators to go out and look for them, which leads to headlines of “Farmer Bill found the world’s largest lithium deposit.”
Refusing to allow the mining (and thus the profit) would break that cycle, and make America seem as mineral poor as Europe.