As I perused the letters section of Detroit’s more liberal paper, The Detroit Free Press, I read a few letters letters that reflected the typical of the liberal point of view regarding the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico:

Now that the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is extending into a second month, blame is starting to be placed on President Barack Obama and the federal government. Perhaps some of this is fair, but let’s face it, we’re all responsible for this environmental apocalypse. That’s because we all have demanded the excessive use of oil and gasoline.

Have you owned a gas-guzzling SUV? Well then, you own some of the blame. Do you drive yourself to work rather than taking public transportation or car-pooling? Then you share in the blame, too.

In retrospect, this well should not have been drilled in the first place. So let’s all learn from this mistake and start taking conservation and alternative energy sources seriously and prevent this from happening again.

The Liberal eco-rallying cry  “we have an oil spill therefore we must end out addiction to oil, drive electric cars, cover our roofs with solar panels and build more windmills” is flawed.

The first issue is that United States uses very little petroleum to generate electricity therefore building windmills and solar panels (traditionally referred to as ‘alternative energy’) will not reduce petroleum consumption.

Another issue with the Liberal eco-rallying cry against petroleum is it is used for many other things besides gasoline. Even if we were to mass produce electric cars, the construction of the electric vehicles themselves contain a large amount of petroleum products. Everything from the seat belts, paint, light weight plastic body panels, seating surfaces (the list is really long) all use material derived from oil.

If goal is to move to large scale electric vehicle production. the next problem is where are we going to get the lithium needed to construct the batteries? The United States has only a very small reserve of lithium. The majority (by some estimates over half) the worlds lithium resides in Bolivia. So, rather than import expensive and dangerous foreign oil from places like Canada and Mexico we will end up importing expensive and dangerous foreign lithium from places like Bolivia.

Even the supply chain to construct these electric cars are going to require lots of petroleum. Are we going to use Sail powered vessels to ship the lithium from Bolivia? Of course not. The entire supply chain, including shipping, will require petroleum.

Polluted water, blue with chlorine, at a lithium mine in the Atacama desert, Chile

Moving full circle back to the original point, the ecological disaster brought on by the deep water oil drilling. It is important to remember that Lithium mining is not exactly an eco-friendly process either. Via the Daily Mail:

In the parched hills of Chile’s northern region the damage caused by lithium mining is immediately clear. As you approach one of the country’s largest lithium mines the white landscape gives way to what appears to be an endless ploughed field. Huge mountains of discarded bright white salt rise out of the plain. The cracked brown earth of the site crumbles in your hands. There is no sign of animal life anywhere. The scarce water has all been poisoned by chemicals leaked from the mine.

Huge channels and tracts have been cut into the desert, each running with heavily polluted water. The blue glow of chlorine makes the water look almost magical, but these glistening pools are highly toxic. The chlorine used to water down the potentially carcinogenic lithium and magnesium compounds that are commonly found in the water table around lithium deposits.

A Chilean delegation recently visited Salar De Uyuni to warn locals of the problems of lithium mining. According to the delegation’s leader, Guillen Mo Gonzalez, the unique landscape of the salt plateau would be destroyed within two decades.

The increasing water scarcity around the Chilean mines has also accelerated the decline of the region’s subsistence agriculture. An entire way of life is disappearing as families leave their near-impossible existence in the mountains and head for the cities.

‘It is hard to show how much water mines are using,’ says Gonzalez.

‘What’s undeniable is that communities are facing severe water shortages. We are seeing patterns of rural subsistence farmers simply giving up and taking their families to horrendous living and working conditions in the cities.

‘Like any mining process it is invasive, it scars the landscape, it destroys the water table and it pollutes the earth and the local wells. This isn’t a green solution – it’s not a solution at all.’ (emphasis added)

As the saying goes, there are no free lunches.