COLLAPSE SERIES: Olivia Lazard - The big fat renewable energy blindspot NO ONE wants to talk about

11 snips

Aug 13, 2024

Olivia Lazard, a peace mediator and rare minerals expert, sheds light on the hidden challenges of renewable energy. She reveals that the transition relies heavily on scarce resources like lithium and cobalt, with significant ecological costs. The conversation dives into the socio-economic impacts of cobalt mining in places like the Congo, highlighting child labor and community exploitation. Lazard advocates for a holistic approach to energy policy, urging awareness of overlooked issues as we strive for sustainable practices in the green economy.

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ANECDOTE

Wagner Troops And Mineral Control

Olivia describes Wagner's arrival in Central African Republic and how military actors took control of resource-rich areas.
She observed camps appearing then mineral-focused activity and displacement around strategic mining zones.

INSIGHT

Mineral Demand Will Skyrocket

Transitioning needs exponentially more diverse minerals for energy, digital and military sectors.
Some scenarios project demand rising many times over current consumption within decades.

INSIGHT

Circular Economy Is Assumed, Not Built

Recycling and circular supply chains are assumed but currently weak business cases make them rare.
Early wind and solar fleets were often discarded or downcycled rather than recycled into new tech.

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Hello, dear wild friends! I'm taking a short break, but I wanted to share some of my previous interviews with guests who delve into themes of collapse, the meta-crisis, and the decline of the systems we've always known to grow—like GDP, technology, population, and prosperity.

Many of you have joined my book serialization project on Substack, where we're navigating the collapse awareness journey together. These interviews provide valuable context for our journey. You can join us here if you're not already part of the project. I release one chapter of my book at a time, and we discuss its contents in the comments, tackling this big, beautiful, hard thing as a community, step by step. In the meantime, enjoy this wild conversation with Olivia Lazard.

Olivia Lazard (peace mediator; rare minerals expert) exposes missing chunks in the “green” energy transition that many of us assume to be the “fix” to the climate crisis. Via her work as a fellow at Carnegie Europe and advisor on global security, she explains how the mining and extraction of rare earth metals like lithium, graphite and cobalt - to make the batteries etc for the new green “economy” - are both rare (there’s literally not enough of them to make the transition), come with massive ecological costs (therefore rendering the “clean tech” very dirty), but are also destabilising the world in ways few are able to fathom. This is a very confronting reality, especially for climate activists and green economy evangelists.

In this chat we go deep and wide into climate security issues, pull apart the techno-optimist “but AI and innovation will save us!” mindset, and what we really need to know about geo-engineering. This, on paper, sounds like a very “head-y” conversation, but Olivia also weaves in “heart” considerations that I think many of you are aching for in this debate. At the end, we discuss whether we have “hope”.

SHOW NOTES

Connect with Olivia on X / Twitter

Check out Olivia’s TED talk to see the charts she talks about.

If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" page

For more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most!

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