The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) estimates that about 700 million metric tons of copper have been extracted to date. Based on mining statistics from the Copper Development Association, that means about half of all the copper ever mined has been mined from the year 2000 through 2018 inclusive... For lithium annual production is now 25.39 times the 1970 rate... the governing ideology of the age is that technology will always give us a way out of scarcity—providing the substitutes we need at the time that we need them in the quantities we require and at the prices we can afford.

In May 2022 temperatures in India and Pakistan reached 50°C. Heat this fierce causes chaos to infrastructure, water security and also triggers irreversible cell damage within the human body. This extreme event, which plunged nearly a billion people into heat stress, was made 30 times more likely due to climate change. The response for those that can afford it,is to buy an air conditioner. Cooling buildings isn’t just about shiny new tech. Human history, is full of effective, low-tech, passive cooling techniques. The hospital in Tambacounda, Senegal, draws on the climate-friendly design principles developed by Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew in the 1956 book ‘Tropical Architecture in the Humid Zone’.

serbia766x1024.png

Demonstrators blocking a highway in Belgrade, Serbia [Photo Credit: Ivan Rajković].

This is the first part of a two-part series on anti-lithium mining protests that have erupted in Serbia over the last several months, and the broader environmental movement around it.

Last September, the outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel made her farewell tour to the Balkans. In Belgrade, she was welcomed by Aleksandar Vučić, the Serbian president whose authoritarian stunts she was repeatedly willing to overlook in exchange for a stable partnership.

The ecocidal accumulation of capital threatens the very conditions of human life on the planet.  The Covid pandemic confirms this, insofar as the increase in zoonoses over the last forty years is attributable to the destruction of ecosystems. The global ecological limits of sustainable human development have been crossed in several areas (climate, biodiversity, nitrogen and land use). They are in the process of being crossed in chemical and plastic pollution, while there is great uncertainty about other key factors of sustainability (freshwater resources, fine-particle pollut

3604bf1f6794df86e08d07370459cad7.jpg

Daniel Tanuro argued that the energy transition would require an increase in fossil energy, and therefore an increase in emissions. So somewhere along the line, to balance the climate equation, we need to compensate for this by cutting production and transport. He suggested eliminating useless or harmful production, such as weapons production or advertising.

The government's climate plans that have been adopted to date would put global warming at 3.2°C. But there won't be any civilisation at 3.2°C, Tanuro said, as there won't be enough food for everyone.