Why are you conflicted? Im seeing huge reductions to industrial carbon price because the feds refused to reign in provinces that violate federal law and then reward them for violating those laws. Now we have even weaker climate policy.

The lesson is obvious to provinces: dont follow federal laws you dont agree with. I guess thats why heslthcare privatization has been allowed to progress so far across the country.

Im not a nuclear bro, but a vast majority of the planet’s Uranium is mined in Australia and Canada and both countries have pretty massive reserves. They have strict regulations and safety surrounding uranium operations. Naturally occurring uranium doesnt even pose much safety risk on its own, its the Radon that is generated by decay that causes problems for humans. Im not too familiar with how uranium mining is done but I imagine Radon risks can be mitigated pretty effectively with ventilation.

Its an interesting way to frame the problem compared to how it might be typically framed as “not enough jobs” or “wages aren’t high enough” or the new favorite among Canadian politicians of a “productivity crisis”

Hard agree from me. Cars are such an inefficient use of resources its crazy. If I had it my way we would all get around by train, tram, or bike.

Ok I think I get it now, it is basically the flaw behind resource allocation through capitalism. The cost of supplying these mining towns does not match their ability to pay for those supplies after the mine goes bust. Do I have that right?

Im a Canadian geologist so I obviously dont have any personal stake in this but I do want to share my thoughts.

I think anti-mining sentiment is understandable in most places but not always justifiable. Lithium mining is absolutely required to transition from fossil fuels. Unless the number of cars on the road is greatly reduced, replacing them with BEVs will require significant amounts of lithium or improvements to Na ion batteries. There is not enough lithium available to get by just on recycling.

The question then becomes: where should this lithium come from? If it is not mined in western countries like USA or Canada, it will be mined by China or developing countries. In this comparison, who has better environmental regulations? Which countries have more human rights abuse?

If we decide that we can mine these deposits in the west, there is still a question about where they are mined. Do we extract lithium from basinal brines? My understanding is that these are generally more environmentally risky than extraction from pegmatites (the deposit type in New England).

The final question becomes, which communities will have to accept this mining? In Canada, most of the time it is indigenous communities that suffer most of the negative impacts of mining. There are many benefits to the communities too (usually), but the indigenous communities do not have nearly as much political sway as say rich cottage owners might, so their preferences and desires often get steamrolled by government in the name of “progress”.

The unfortunate reality is that if we want to get rid of fossil fuels, we need to do a lot more mining and extraction or come up with some serious technological and societal innovation. In a globalized economy, saying that you dont want mining near your home means that you want some other people to deal with the potentially negative consequences of it. I am not saying that we need to allow all mining everywhere, but these are important ethical considerations that we have to make when talking about how we want society to progress.

Sorry for the rant.

This is an interesting perspective I haven’t heard before. Are there historical examples of this happening?

What are you referring to? Im not American and Clinton was before my time

I dont think money spent on science is necessarily a bad metric for quantifying how much a government is prioritizing science. I do agree that more money spent on science != better science. I know from my own experience in geology that there are some things that China does well and a lot that they are really behind on and there’s a lot of sub-par science that comes out of China. Does that matter when science is just a numbers game in the modern context? I couldn’t say

Oh I see, thats very interesting thank you! Are you an archaeologist, or just someone very interested in stone-age history?

Where do European Neanderthals fit into this story?

I feel this way after finishing grad school and going into industry. Nobody wants to just nerd out