Renewable energy!
It’s the great hope – humans will make the leap from using dirty polluting fossil fuels to being on board the Star Trek Enterprise.
And sure, it’s a better use of energy than burning stuff up, and it beats paying greedy corporations for that privilege.
Part of the renewable energy make-up is of course rare metals, which are mined in basically the same manner as coal, oil and gas.
What a drag!
Lithium, for example, is a rare metal, and is essential for the future of renewables – it’s used in everything from phones to EVs.
It’s a highly reactive alkali metal that offers excellent heat and electrical conductivity.
Last week, a sharp young Aussie news vlogger team made the point on social media that no Australian media had reported on nation-wide protests in Serbia, opposing a new lithium mine by Aussie miner, Rio Tinto.
Punters Politics is a duo of Konrad and James, who describe themselves as ‘navigating the divisive world of Australian politics on a quest to make it simple for the everyday punter’.
Their clever short video on the protests outlined that, ‘most of Australia’s news outlets are owned by just three billionaires, all with significant stakes in various mining industries. Coincidence or conspiracy?’
They refer to Ground News, a news aggregator app that allows users to compare media coverage from across the political spectrum.
According to that app, plenty of other news organisations from around the globe covered the story.
And thankfully, so did the ABC, except their story was from January 2022: ‘Serbia backs out of controversial Rio Tinto lithium mine’.
That was the search result from ‘Serbia Rio Tinto lithium mine’.
Fun fact: Australia is the world’s largest lithium producer, and four of our five lithium mines are in WA, with the other in the NT.
Given we have such a stake in the sector, are reasonable safeguards in place around the potential contamination of water supplies and habitat destruction from open-pit lithium mining?
Hans Lovejoy, editor
News tips are welcome: [email protected]
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