Gasoline isn't much use when they are about to blow the refineries up. Solar/Wind and lithium batteries. It works for warning road signs in the middle of nowhere and it works for me. I can be off grid for most of the year and live quite normally and if push came to shove I could live off grid i.e. still have electricity for some things even in the depths of winter.
Creating lithium/cobalt batteries requires mass destruction of some of the last intact ecosystems on Earth.
Here in Canada our government and it's corporate masters intend on ๐ง๐ฟ๐ฎ๐ฑ๐ถ๐ป๐ด ๐๐น๐ผ๐ผ๐ฑ ๐ฎ๐ป๐ฑ ๐๐ต๐ฒ ๐๐ฒ๐ฎ๐๐๐ ๐ผ๐ณ ๐๐ต๐ฒ ๐๐ผ๐ฟ๐ฒ๐ฎ๐น ๐๐ผ๐ฟ๐ฒ๐๐ ๐๐ผ๐ฟ ๐๐ถ๐๐ต๐ถ๐๐บ ๐๐ป ๐ข๐ป๐๐ฎ๐ฟ๐ถ๐ผ/๐ค๐๐ฒ๐ฏ๐ฒ๐ฐ in ๐ฎ๐ฌ๐ฎ๐ฏ
The Boreal Forest and the body of our Mother Earth is being assaulted in northern Ontario and Quebec. Over 217,000 Hectares of forest, lakes and rivers have been purchased by lithium mining corporations that intend to clear cut and carve in open pit mines into the bones of our Mother Earth in northern Ontario and Quebec (I provide a breakdown of which companies have purchased what land below).
Hard rock lithium mining involves deforestation, draining lakes and rivers, blowing the land into pieces with explosives, carving deep gashes into the Earth with giant machines, using truckloads of industrial solvents like sulfuric acid (resulting in water contamination with toxic sludge) dragging that processed rubble to processing facilities with fleets of heavy machinery then processing the ore with extremely high energy furnaces using another slew of toxic chemicals (which further contaminate the water table, lakes, rivers and ocean elsewhere).
To extract one ton of lithium, you need to contaminate approximately 500,000 gallons of water. Lithium mining also destroys the soil structure and leads to unsustainable water table reduction. In the end, it depletes water resources, leaving the land too dry and exposing ecosystems to the risk of extinction.
The long term results are water loss, ground destabilisation, biodiversity loss, increased salinity of rivers, contaminated soil, massive co-2 emissions and toxic waste. Some of the most common lithium mining wastes are sulfuric acid discharge and the radioactive uranium byproduct (which leaches into the ground water, streams, rivers and lakes). They can cause various forms of cancer and diseases. The mining also presents other serious problems like large amounts of lime and magnesium wastes.
As Lithium extraction causes surface water contamination, it also destroys other water sources. So, itโs also responsible for the creation of toxic rain. The water cycle largely depends on the limited forests. The trees extract underground water and release it into the atmosphere for this process to continue. Therefore, lithium mining hinders the water cycle from providing adequate rainfall in the affected areas. The impacts are severe. The long term result will be increased regional droughts, soil erosion and the risk of desertification.
The entire lithium extraction process contributes to a massive increase in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Lithium miners cut down trees and remove all other life forms from their targeted mining areas to eliminate obstructions.
Strip mining and deforestation is not something that can be undone. It means the decimation of ancient diverse ecosystems, the poisoning of the sacred waters and extinction of species and so there is nothing "sustainable", "renewable" or "green" about it.
1- Ultra Lithium - intends to destroy 2,416+ hectares of land around Forgan Lake and Georgia Lake (near Thunder Bay, Ontario).
2- International lithium corporation - intends to destroy 47,700 hectares (477 square kilometers) of boreal forest around Raleigh Lake (located near Ignace, Ontario)
3- Fairservice Lithium - intends to destroy 2,544 hectares of boreal forest around Mavis Lake, Ontario
4- Peggy Group - intends to destroy 7,386 hectares of boreal forest located about 80km north of Sioux Lookout, in the province of Ontario.
5- Rock Edge - intends to destroy 6378 hectares of boreal forest (in their combined "Maun" and "Terrier" properties) between the East Wabigoon and English River, in Ontario.
6- The Hearst Project - intends to destroy 29,805 hectares of land located roughly 15 kilometers south of Hearst, Ontario.
7- Frontier Lithiumโs PAK Project (involving Green Technology Metals corporation)- intends to destroy 67,800 hectares of boreal forest near Red Lake (with two subsidiary projects called "Seymour" and "Root").
8- Vancouverโs "Lithium One Metals" and Critical Elements Corporation - intend to destroy 53,000+ hectares (530 km2) of boreal forest in Northern Ontario and the James Bay side of Quebec.
-----------------------------------------
This is not a comprehensive list, there are many more mines planned for the areas listed above (and all over Canada in the Boreal Forest zone). I just got emotionally exhausted after spending half a day reading the lithium mining companies press releases where they were bragging about having rights to begin blasting the land to pieces soon for profit (and bragging about having paid off the locals and having made them sign binding contracts so they cannot complain about environmental/health damages in future years).
The boreal forest is teeming with life (containing about two thirds of Canada's 140 000 species of plants, animals, and micro-organisms.) To describe it, let's begin with the trees that make up the forest canopy. There are about 20 species of them (including but not limited to Spruce, fir, pine, and tamarack, trembling aspen, balsam poplar, birch and more). The boreal plays a critical role in how the planet breathes through the process of photosynthesis. By extension, it also shapes the composition of the atmosphere, which today includes maintaining 21 percent of the life supporting concentrations of oxygen in our atmosphere. The impact of the forest is so significant that global levels of carbon dioxide, actually drop significantly in spring and summer when it is growing most.
For those concerned about carbon levels in the atmosphere, preserving the integrity of the Boreal Forest should be a top priority. The boreal forest soaks up more carbon than it emits. The boreal is also cold. Thus, when trees die, they decompose slowly, keeping carbon in their bodies relatively longer than dead trees in tropical forests, which rot swiftly and release large amounts of carbon. The cold also keeps the borealโs permafrost frozen, trapping carbon-rich methane, underneath the surface of the soil. As well, much of the boreal is dotted with marshy peatland, another efficient storage facility for carbon.
The boreal forest shelters more than 85 species of mammals, including some of the largest and most majesticโwood bison, elk, moose, woodland caribou, grizzly and black bears, and wolvesโand smaller species, such as beavers, snowshoe hares, Canada lynx, red squirrels, lemmings, and voles.
Nearly half of the birds in North America rely on the boreal forest at some time during the year. It is estimated that at least 3 billion landbirds, water birds, and shorebirds breed in the boreal forest each year, representing more than 300 species. Another 300 million birds, including several species of shorebirds, swans, and geese, breed farther north and travel through the boreal forest during migration. It is estimated that 32 000 insect species inhabit Canada's boreal forest, although about one third of these species have yet to be described. Canada's boreal forest is home to about 130 species of fish (including minnows, stickleback and Larger species such as including walleye, northern pike, lake trout, Arctic grayling, yellow perch, brook trout, whitefish and burbot).
It is worth re-iterating that Hard rock lithium mining involves deforestation, draining lakes and rivers, blowing the land into pieces with explosives, carving deep gashes into the Earth with giant machines, using truckloads of industrial solvents like sulfuric acid (resulting in water contamination with toxic sludge) dragging that processed rubble to processing facilities with fleets of heavy machinery then processing the ore with extremely high energy demanding furnaces using another slew of toxic chemicals (which further contaminate the water table, lakes, rivers and ocean elsewhere).
In order to illustrate the potential for catastrophic harm to ecosystems and human health that these mines pose I present a cautionary tale: The Liqi River was once full of fish: Almost none are left. Chemical spills from the Ganzizhou Rongda lithium mine have killed many. โThe whole river stank, and it was full of dead yaks and dead fish,โ said one villager.: โMassesโ of dead fish covered the river. The people got the mine shut down three times, only to have the government reopen it. One of the elders said, โOld people, we see the mines and we cry. What are the future generations going to do? How are they going to survive?โA local activist surveyed people in the area. Even if mining companies split the profits and promised to repair the land after the mines are exhausted, the Tibetans wanted no part of it. โGod is in the mountains and the rivers, these are the places that spirits live,โ he explained.โ โsustainable developmentโ technology (Lithium battery tech) offers everything: every luxury, every whim, available at the touch of a โcarbon-freeโ button. But the world that these technologies provide will be a rotting, desecrated, and, finally, dead world if we let them continue on their crusade to turn the living world into dead things, for profit and to perpetuate our obscene technologically addicted human โcivilizationโ.
In the concentrations extracted via industrial mining operations, lithium is harmful to living beings. It interferes with sperm viability, causes birth defects, memory problems, kidney failure, movement disorders, and so on. Other materials in an electric-car battery can be even more harmful than lithium, with nickel and cobalt electrodes being the most destructive component.
As I covered in a past post, about half of the cobalt used in lithium batteries comes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where 40,000 children as young as four are essentially enslaved in mines, carrying backbreaking loads in conditions of intense heat, with no safety equipment, under abusive managers and guards, for a wage of a dollar a day.
Here in Canada, we may end up paying our cobalt miners more money and they may be wearing steel toes and hat hats, but the impacts on the ecosystem will be just as devastating.
Thereโs no circumventing the fact that these energy-storage technologies are fundamentally destructive. And they're dependent on a global supply chain and advanced manufacturing technologies that, themselves, are fundamentally destructive. Machines making machines making machines; and while more and more hyperbolic "green" headlines are written, the planet is being killed.
Next on the hit list for corporate pillaging in the name of "sustainability" is the Boreal Forest.
As described above, our corrupt corporation captured government is helping to initiate large projects to pillage the lands of indigenous peoples (Cree of Eeyou Istchee, the Shakopaatikoong peoples of the Slate Falls first nation and the Waabitigweyaang peoples of Sandy Lake, among others ) and the body of Mother Earth in new Lithium (cobalt and tantalum) mines in northern Ontario and Quebec.
Given the nature of open pit mining, lithium leeching ponds and lithium refining, the inevitable result will be large scale poisoning of the water table and the ocean in James bay, contamination of the great lakes (through lake Superior, moving downstream into all the other great lakes), deforestation and genocide of local wildlife.
These corporations intend to clear cut the boreal forest, annihilating the little bit of remaining habitat that exists in Ontario for the moose, caribou, the lynx, bears, the mountain lion, wolves, fox, bobcats, eagles, hawks and countless other winged and four legged beings will be forcibly displaced from their homes (inevitably resulting in many of them attempting to return to their homes only to starve while pacing near the fences or to be poisoned by the toxins these mines produce).
The fish in the lakes, the whales and countless other beings in James bay, they will all be decimated by these projects.
These corporations appear to be moving in fast and as quiet as possible (paying off locals with bribes along the way and getting them to sign binding agreements) to avoid local and environmentalist resistance.
These projects will mean we trade blood for lithium so we can have fun i-pads and electric cars to play with. We will be trading the ancient beauty and majesty of the Boreal forest and all it's inhabitants for smart phones and tesla cars. I can't help but ask myself this question... Is it really worth it?
In closing, I would like to humbly remind you that Each time you make a choice that nourishes, respects and enriches the living Earth, you are nourishing, respecting and enriching yourself... and each time you make a choice that degrades, harms and pillages her, you are degrading, harming and pillaging yourself.
Those that wish to walk a path guided by any kind of honest moral compass (including but not limited to the permaculture ethical imperative of People Care-Earth Care-Future Care) are going to have to make some hard choices in the coming years if we want our actions to continue to align with the principles we espouse and claim to live by.
For many years I have told people who champion electric cars and solar panels that considering they also rely on finite resources, we should be careful that we do not end up going from trading blood for oil, to trading blood for lithium.
Over 50 percent of the worldโs known lithium deposits are in the โLithium Triangleโโthe lithium concentrated brine sources in Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile. Boliviaโs high mountain desertsโthe Salar de Uyuniโhave by far the largest known reserves of lithium.
Evo Morales -- Bolivia's first indigenous president, had a commitment to the environment and to Pachamama (Mother Earth) and he was against inviting in transnational corporations (like Telsa and it's lithium mining partners) to pillage the land for lithium. When he refused to allow multi-national corporations to pillage the Earth for the large lithium deposits in his country it was not long before a US-backed military coup took place.
President Evo Morales Ayma, was removed illegally from his office in November 2019. The Bolivian military, at the behest of Bolivian oligarchs with ties to Lithium Mining Corporations and the United States government, threatened Morales; Morales went into exile in Mexico and then in Argentina.
The CEO of the U.S.-based Telsa car manufacturer has admitted to involvement in what President Morales has referred to as a โLithium Coup.โ
The coup was about Bolivian lithium; and not only did it involve violent coercion to remove Bolivia's first indigenous president from office, it also resulted in two massacres local people defending their land against the lithium mines (and now is resulting in the destruction of the land and ecosystems there, as I exposed in my previous post).
This is what "sustainable development", Greenwashing, "Green Colonialism" and trading blood for lithium looks like.
The corporate oligarchs that are ravenous to make billions from pillaging the Earth for lithium and cobalt now have their crosshairs set on Ontario and Quebec, God help anyone that dares to stand in their way to defend the Boreal Forest (which they intend to scalp, blow to pieces with explosives, grind into rubble and poison with a stew of toxic chemicals so we can have ipads and EVs).
Lithium mining, cobalt mining and other forms of extraction that are being promoted as "green" are poisoning water, destroying habitat, facilitating consumerism, and destroying poor and indigenous communities around the world.
I own a freeze dryer (and have freeze dried several times worth the cost of the machine worth of superfoods and homegrown medicines since purchasing it).
I see the huge practical benefits of freeze dryers but I feel I would be remiss if I did not also caution about the risks of depending (solely) on technology such as that for preserving food.
Unless one is capable of gathering all the electricity they need to run their home (and their freeze drying machine) off grid and unless one has back up components for both the energy generation/accumulation systems and the freeze dryer itself stored in some kind of Faraday cage, situations could arise where that technology could become totally unusable. (see: https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/preparing-for-the-100-year-storms for more information on one such inevitability that will render such technologies useless)
This is one of the reasons that I am in the process of publishing some material ( see: https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/my-book-is-finally-done-recipes-for for more info) that can help empower individuals to preserve seasonal abundances of food (whether foraged or cultivated) using low tech methods without the need for specialized equipment. Lacto-fermentation is one versatile method that any gardener or forager should become accustomed with as you do not need anything other than salt, water and random containers (such as mason jars etc) to be able to preserve food for up to a year.
Now that being said, as I also own a freeze dryer I advocate for prioritizing low tech off grid food cultivation/preservation tools, skills and experience and then freeze drying as a supplementary way to be even better prepared for a wide range of ewmergencies. Getting a freeze dryer was no small decision as they are very expensive machines and I am not financially wealthy. The motivating factor for my wanting a freeze dryer can be boiled down to a combination of how I want to treat this vehicle (my body) and the amount of land I have to grow food. For the time being, we have an urban suburban lot and so I have carefully selected some of the most nutrient dense (and antioxidant/polyphenol diverse) crops so that we can give our bodies the absolute best quality food and medicine we can trust . Sometimes we have large seasonal abundances where even through lactic acid fermentation I reach my capacity for storage (or have crops that do not ferment well or easily) meaning I have to freeze, dehydrate or pickle (cook with vinegar). The last three methods of crop preservation mean significant losses in the nutritional content (and often flavor) of food. One of the reasons I got a freeze dryer is because of the technology's uncanny ability to preserve the nutritional content (as well as the flavor, texture and color) of food. Tests show that (aside from some very minor vitamin c loss in certain crops) freeze drying retains around 97% of the nutrients of the fresh / raw food for at least 20 years! Dehydration on the other hand, (while much more energy efficient and still very useful) tends to result in the loss of Vitamins A and C, thiamine, riboflavin and niacin (averaging around 50% โ 60% of the original nutrients being left over from the raw / fresh item).
While that is still a significant amount and I still plan on dehydrating a fair bit, I can't ignore the impressive differences in shelf life, nutrition retention, and texture retention of freeze drying vs dehydrating. So for us (and our priorities) getting a freeze drying unit that can preserve food which can be be relied upon for years to come was imperative.
If I had more land I might have considered just coping with the inevitable nutrient loss and go 100% "back to basics" for my crop preservation, but for now we do not have a lot of growing space, so every Goji berry, medicinal herb/fungi, Purple sweet potato, Black tomato, Golden beet, Moringa leaf, Tumeric rhizome, Ginger rhizome and Blueberry we grow counts and I need to keep all their goodness intact in order to feel I am properly caring for our bodies (and utilizing the growing space we have to its greatest potential).
With regards to emergency preparedness side of this device, in the event of a total collapse of modern civilization I am capable of using a combination of available conventionally stored garden crops, foraging, and improvising (even if it were to happen in the dead of winter) to survive (and care for my loved ones at home). So, for us, a freeze dryer is not about survival in the case of extreme emergencies, and more about comfort, wanting to be in optimal health in any situation, having portable/versatile food stores that can be grabbed on the go (should the need arise to leave in a hurry) and it is about my want to maximize my ability to preserve our most nutrient dense crops in peak condition (considering how much time and love I put into growing top quality.) So that is my take on freeze dryers in relation to emergency preparedness.
God, gold, guns, gardens, gasoline. This is the true 5G.
Gasoline isn't much use when they are about to blow the refineries up. Solar/Wind and lithium batteries. It works for warning road signs in the middle of nowhere and it works for me. I can be off grid for most of the year and live quite normally and if push came to shove I could live off grid i.e. still have electricity for some things even in the depths of winter.
Creating lithium/cobalt batteries requires mass destruction of some of the last intact ecosystems on Earth.
Here in Canada our government and it's corporate masters intend on ๐ง๐ฟ๐ฎ๐ฑ๐ถ๐ป๐ด ๐๐น๐ผ๐ผ๐ฑ ๐ฎ๐ป๐ฑ ๐๐ต๐ฒ ๐๐ฒ๐ฎ๐๐๐ ๐ผ๐ณ ๐๐ต๐ฒ ๐๐ผ๐ฟ๐ฒ๐ฎ๐น ๐๐ผ๐ฟ๐ฒ๐๐ ๐๐ผ๐ฟ ๐๐ถ๐๐ต๐ถ๐๐บ ๐๐ป ๐ข๐ป๐๐ฎ๐ฟ๐ถ๐ผ/๐ค๐๐ฒ๐ฏ๐ฒ๐ฐ in ๐ฎ๐ฌ๐ฎ๐ฏ
The pictures linked here: https://archive.org/details/blood4lithiumborealforestpillaging show a few of the areas that have been purchased by mining corporations and what they intend on doing with that land starting this year.
The Boreal Forest and the body of our Mother Earth is being assaulted in northern Ontario and Quebec. Over 217,000 Hectares of forest, lakes and rivers have been purchased by lithium mining corporations that intend to clear cut and carve in open pit mines into the bones of our Mother Earth in northern Ontario and Quebec (I provide a breakdown of which companies have purchased what land below).
Hard rock lithium mining involves deforestation, draining lakes and rivers, blowing the land into pieces with explosives, carving deep gashes into the Earth with giant machines, using truckloads of industrial solvents like sulfuric acid (resulting in water contamination with toxic sludge) dragging that processed rubble to processing facilities with fleets of heavy machinery then processing the ore with extremely high energy furnaces using another slew of toxic chemicals (which further contaminate the water table, lakes, rivers and ocean elsewhere).
To extract one ton of lithium, you need to contaminate approximately 500,000 gallons of water. Lithium mining also destroys the soil structure and leads to unsustainable water table reduction. In the end, it depletes water resources, leaving the land too dry and exposing ecosystems to the risk of extinction.
The long term results are water loss, ground destabilisation, biodiversity loss, increased salinity of rivers, contaminated soil, massive co-2 emissions and toxic waste. Some of the most common lithium mining wastes are sulfuric acid discharge and the radioactive uranium byproduct (which leaches into the ground water, streams, rivers and lakes). They can cause various forms of cancer and diseases. The mining also presents other serious problems like large amounts of lime and magnesium wastes.
As Lithium extraction causes surface water contamination, it also destroys other water sources. So, itโs also responsible for the creation of toxic rain. The water cycle largely depends on the limited forests. The trees extract underground water and release it into the atmosphere for this process to continue. Therefore, lithium mining hinders the water cycle from providing adequate rainfall in the affected areas. The impacts are severe. The long term result will be increased regional droughts, soil erosion and the risk of desertification.
The entire lithium extraction process contributes to a massive increase in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Lithium miners cut down trees and remove all other life forms from their targeted mining areas to eliminate obstructions.
Strip mining and deforestation is not something that can be undone. It means the decimation of ancient diverse ecosystems, the poisoning of the sacred waters and extinction of species and so there is nothing "sustainable", "renewable" or "green" about it.
๐๐ฒ๐ฟ๐ฒ ๐ถ๐ ๐ฎ ๐น๐ถ๐๐ ๐ผ๐ณ ๐๐ผ๐บ๐ฒ ๐ผ๐ณ ๐๐ต๐ฒ ๐๐ฎ๐ฟ๐ฑ ๐ฅ๐ผ๐ฐ๐ธ ๐๐ถ๐๐ต๐ถ๐๐บ ๐ ๐ถ๐ป๐ฒ๐ ๐๐ต๐ฎ๐ ๐ฎ๐ฟ๐ฒ ๐ฝ๐น๐ฎ๐ป๐ป๐ฒ๐ฑ ๐๐ผ ๐ฏ๐ฒ ๐ฐ๐ฎ๐ฟ๐๐ฒ๐ฑ ๐ถ๐ป๐๐ผ ๐๐ต๐ฒ ๐๐ผ๐ฟ๐ฒ๐ฎ๐น ๐๐ผ๐ฟ๐ฒ๐๐ ๐๐๐ฎ๐ฟ๐๐ถ๐ป๐ด ๐ถ๐ป ๐ฎ๐ฌ๐ฎ๐ฏ:
1- Ultra Lithium - intends to destroy 2,416+ hectares of land around Forgan Lake and Georgia Lake (near Thunder Bay, Ontario).
2- International lithium corporation - intends to destroy 47,700 hectares (477 square kilometers) of boreal forest around Raleigh Lake (located near Ignace, Ontario)
3- Fairservice Lithium - intends to destroy 2,544 hectares of boreal forest around Mavis Lake, Ontario
4- Peggy Group - intends to destroy 7,386 hectares of boreal forest located about 80km north of Sioux Lookout, in the province of Ontario.
5- Rock Edge - intends to destroy 6378 hectares of boreal forest (in their combined "Maun" and "Terrier" properties) between the East Wabigoon and English River, in Ontario.
6- The Hearst Project - intends to destroy 29,805 hectares of land located roughly 15 kilometers south of Hearst, Ontario.
7- Frontier Lithiumโs PAK Project (involving Green Technology Metals corporation)- intends to destroy 67,800 hectares of boreal forest near Red Lake (with two subsidiary projects called "Seymour" and "Root").
8- Vancouverโs "Lithium One Metals" and Critical Elements Corporation - intend to destroy 53,000+ hectares (530 km2) of boreal forest in Northern Ontario and the James Bay side of Quebec.
-----------------------------------------
This is not a comprehensive list, there are many more mines planned for the areas listed above (and all over Canada in the Boreal Forest zone). I just got emotionally exhausted after spending half a day reading the lithium mining companies press releases where they were bragging about having rights to begin blasting the land to pieces soon for profit (and bragging about having paid off the locals and having made them sign binding contracts so they cannot complain about environmental/health damages in future years).
The boreal forest is teeming with life (containing about two thirds of Canada's 140 000 species of plants, animals, and micro-organisms.) To describe it, let's begin with the trees that make up the forest canopy. There are about 20 species of them (including but not limited to Spruce, fir, pine, and tamarack, trembling aspen, balsam poplar, birch and more). The boreal plays a critical role in how the planet breathes through the process of photosynthesis. By extension, it also shapes the composition of the atmosphere, which today includes maintaining 21 percent of the life supporting concentrations of oxygen in our atmosphere. The impact of the forest is so significant that global levels of carbon dioxide, actually drop significantly in spring and summer when it is growing most.
For those concerned about carbon levels in the atmosphere, preserving the integrity of the Boreal Forest should be a top priority. The boreal forest soaks up more carbon than it emits. The boreal is also cold. Thus, when trees die, they decompose slowly, keeping carbon in their bodies relatively longer than dead trees in tropical forests, which rot swiftly and release large amounts of carbon. The cold also keeps the borealโs permafrost frozen, trapping carbon-rich methane, underneath the surface of the soil. As well, much of the boreal is dotted with marshy peatland, another efficient storage facility for carbon.
(continued in another comment below..)
(continued from above..)
The boreal forest shelters more than 85 species of mammals, including some of the largest and most majesticโwood bison, elk, moose, woodland caribou, grizzly and black bears, and wolvesโand smaller species, such as beavers, snowshoe hares, Canada lynx, red squirrels, lemmings, and voles.
Nearly half of the birds in North America rely on the boreal forest at some time during the year. It is estimated that at least 3 billion landbirds, water birds, and shorebirds breed in the boreal forest each year, representing more than 300 species. Another 300 million birds, including several species of shorebirds, swans, and geese, breed farther north and travel through the boreal forest during migration. It is estimated that 32 000 insect species inhabit Canada's boreal forest, although about one third of these species have yet to be described. Canada's boreal forest is home to about 130 species of fish (including minnows, stickleback and Larger species such as including walleye, northern pike, lake trout, Arctic grayling, yellow perch, brook trout, whitefish and burbot).
It is worth re-iterating that Hard rock lithium mining involves deforestation, draining lakes and rivers, blowing the land into pieces with explosives, carving deep gashes into the Earth with giant machines, using truckloads of industrial solvents like sulfuric acid (resulting in water contamination with toxic sludge) dragging that processed rubble to processing facilities with fleets of heavy machinery then processing the ore with extremely high energy demanding furnaces using another slew of toxic chemicals (which further contaminate the water table, lakes, rivers and ocean elsewhere).
In order to illustrate the potential for catastrophic harm to ecosystems and human health that these mines pose I present a cautionary tale: The Liqi River was once full of fish: Almost none are left. Chemical spills from the Ganzizhou Rongda lithium mine have killed many. โThe whole river stank, and it was full of dead yaks and dead fish,โ said one villager.: โMassesโ of dead fish covered the river. The people got the mine shut down three times, only to have the government reopen it. One of the elders said, โOld people, we see the mines and we cry. What are the future generations going to do? How are they going to survive?โA local activist surveyed people in the area. Even if mining companies split the profits and promised to repair the land after the mines are exhausted, the Tibetans wanted no part of it. โGod is in the mountains and the rivers, these are the places that spirits live,โ he explained.โ โsustainable developmentโ technology (Lithium battery tech) offers everything: every luxury, every whim, available at the touch of a โcarbon-freeโ button. But the world that these technologies provide will be a rotting, desecrated, and, finally, dead world if we let them continue on their crusade to turn the living world into dead things, for profit and to perpetuate our obscene technologically addicted human โcivilizationโ.
In the concentrations extracted via industrial mining operations, lithium is harmful to living beings. It interferes with sperm viability, causes birth defects, memory problems, kidney failure, movement disorders, and so on. Other materials in an electric-car battery can be even more harmful than lithium, with nickel and cobalt electrodes being the most destructive component.
As I covered in a past post, about half of the cobalt used in lithium batteries comes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where 40,000 children as young as four are essentially enslaved in mines, carrying backbreaking loads in conditions of intense heat, with no safety equipment, under abusive managers and guards, for a wage of a dollar a day.
Here in Canada, we may end up paying our cobalt miners more money and they may be wearing steel toes and hat hats, but the impacts on the ecosystem will be just as devastating.
Thereโs no circumventing the fact that these energy-storage technologies are fundamentally destructive. And they're dependent on a global supply chain and advanced manufacturing technologies that, themselves, are fundamentally destructive. Machines making machines making machines; and while more and more hyperbolic "green" headlines are written, the planet is being killed.
Next on the hit list for corporate pillaging in the name of "sustainability" is the Boreal Forest.
As described above, our corrupt corporation captured government is helping to initiate large projects to pillage the lands of indigenous peoples (Cree of Eeyou Istchee, the Shakopaatikoong peoples of the Slate Falls first nation and the Waabitigweyaang peoples of Sandy Lake, among others ) and the body of Mother Earth in new Lithium (cobalt and tantalum) mines in northern Ontario and Quebec.
Given the nature of open pit mining, lithium leeching ponds and lithium refining, the inevitable result will be large scale poisoning of the water table and the ocean in James bay, contamination of the great lakes (through lake Superior, moving downstream into all the other great lakes), deforestation and genocide of local wildlife.
These corporations intend to clear cut the boreal forest, annihilating the little bit of remaining habitat that exists in Ontario for the moose, caribou, the lynx, bears, the mountain lion, wolves, fox, bobcats, eagles, hawks and countless other winged and four legged beings will be forcibly displaced from their homes (inevitably resulting in many of them attempting to return to their homes only to starve while pacing near the fences or to be poisoned by the toxins these mines produce).
The fish in the lakes, the whales and countless other beings in James bay, they will all be decimated by these projects.
These corporations appear to be moving in fast and as quiet as possible (paying off locals with bribes along the way and getting them to sign binding agreements) to avoid local and environmentalist resistance.
These projects will mean we trade blood for lithium so we can have fun i-pads and electric cars to play with. We will be trading the ancient beauty and majesty of the Boreal forest and all it's inhabitants for smart phones and tesla cars. I can't help but ask myself this question... Is it really worth it?
In closing, I would like to humbly remind you that Each time you make a choice that nourishes, respects and enriches the living Earth, you are nourishing, respecting and enriching yourself... and each time you make a choice that degrades, harms and pillages her, you are degrading, harming and pillaging yourself.
Those that wish to walk a path guided by any kind of honest moral compass (including but not limited to the permaculture ethical imperative of People Care-Earth Care-Future Care) are going to have to make some hard choices in the coming years if we want our actions to continue to align with the principles we espouse and claim to live by.
For many years I have told people who champion electric cars and solar panels that considering they also rely on finite resources, we should be careful that we do not end up going from trading blood for oil, to trading blood for lithium.
It appears that, sadly, that is exactly what we are doing now in South America, Australia and soon in northern Ontario/Quebec (and in the Cobalt Mines in the Congo, that are also required to make the batteries). For more info on the Congo Cobalt situation watch this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsypEzDDBQU or read this: https://archive.org/details/siddharth-kara-cobalt-red-how-the-blood-of-the-congo-powers-our-lives-st.-martin_20230209
Over 50 percent of the worldโs known lithium deposits are in the โLithium Triangleโโthe lithium concentrated brine sources in Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile. Boliviaโs high mountain desertsโthe Salar de Uyuniโhave by far the largest known reserves of lithium.
Evo Morales -- Bolivia's first indigenous president, had a commitment to the environment and to Pachamama (Mother Earth) and he was against inviting in transnational corporations (like Telsa and it's lithium mining partners) to pillage the land for lithium. When he refused to allow multi-national corporations to pillage the Earth for the large lithium deposits in his country it was not long before a US-backed military coup took place.
President Evo Morales Ayma, was removed illegally from his office in November 2019. The Bolivian military, at the behest of Bolivian oligarchs with ties to Lithium Mining Corporations and the United States government, threatened Morales; Morales went into exile in Mexico and then in Argentina.
The CEO of the U.S.-based Telsa car manufacturer has admitted to involvement in what President Morales has referred to as a โLithium Coup.โ
โWe will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.โ was Elon Muskโs response to an accusation on twitter that the U.S. government organized a coup against President Evo Morales, so that Musk could obtain Boliviaโs lithium. https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/03/11/elon-musk-is-acting-like-a-neo-conquistador-for-south-americas-lithium/
The coup was about Bolivian lithium; and not only did it involve violent coercion to remove Bolivia's first indigenous president from office, it also resulted in two massacres local people defending their land against the lithium mines (and now is resulting in the destruction of the land and ecosystems there, as I exposed in my previous post).
This is what "sustainable development", Greenwashing, "Green Colonialism" and trading blood for lithium looks like.
The corporate oligarchs that are ravenous to make billions from pillaging the Earth for lithium and cobalt now have their crosshairs set on Ontario and Quebec, God help anyone that dares to stand in their way to defend the Boreal Forest (which they intend to scalp, blow to pieces with explosives, grind into rubble and poison with a stew of toxic chemicals so we can have ipads and EVs).
Lithium mining, cobalt mining and other forms of extraction that are being promoted as "green" are poisoning water, destroying habitat, facilitating consumerism, and destroying poor and indigenous communities around the world.
Good call!
They say it's only good 6-12 months but in simpler machinery I've seen gas work good for much longer.
Diesel is stable longer, so, another option.
It's always good to be prepared for dry spells. Freeze-dry food keeps a long time and beats starving!
I own a freeze dryer (and have freeze dried several times worth the cost of the machine worth of superfoods and homegrown medicines since purchasing it).
I see the huge practical benefits of freeze dryers but I feel I would be remiss if I did not also caution about the risks of depending (solely) on technology such as that for preserving food.
Unless one is capable of gathering all the electricity they need to run their home (and their freeze drying machine) off grid and unless one has back up components for both the energy generation/accumulation systems and the freeze dryer itself stored in some kind of Faraday cage, situations could arise where that technology could become totally unusable. (see: https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/preparing-for-the-100-year-storms for more information on one such inevitability that will render such technologies useless)
This is one of the reasons that I am in the process of publishing some material ( see: https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/my-book-is-finally-done-recipes-for for more info) that can help empower individuals to preserve seasonal abundances of food (whether foraged or cultivated) using low tech methods without the need for specialized equipment. Lacto-fermentation is one versatile method that any gardener or forager should become accustomed with as you do not need anything other than salt, water and random containers (such as mason jars etc) to be able to preserve food for up to a year.
Now that being said, as I also own a freeze dryer I advocate for prioritizing low tech off grid food cultivation/preservation tools, skills and experience and then freeze drying as a supplementary way to be even better prepared for a wide range of ewmergencies. Getting a freeze dryer was no small decision as they are very expensive machines and I am not financially wealthy. The motivating factor for my wanting a freeze dryer can be boiled down to a combination of how I want to treat this vehicle (my body) and the amount of land I have to grow food. For the time being, we have an urban suburban lot and so I have carefully selected some of the most nutrient dense (and antioxidant/polyphenol diverse) crops so that we can give our bodies the absolute best quality food and medicine we can trust . Sometimes we have large seasonal abundances where even through lactic acid fermentation I reach my capacity for storage (or have crops that do not ferment well or easily) meaning I have to freeze, dehydrate or pickle (cook with vinegar). The last three methods of crop preservation mean significant losses in the nutritional content (and often flavor) of food. One of the reasons I got a freeze dryer is because of the technology's uncanny ability to preserve the nutritional content (as well as the flavor, texture and color) of food. Tests show that (aside from some very minor vitamin c loss in certain crops) freeze drying retains around 97% of the nutrients of the fresh / raw food for at least 20 years! Dehydration on the other hand, (while much more energy efficient and still very useful) tends to result in the loss of Vitamins A and C, thiamine, riboflavin and niacin (averaging around 50% โ 60% of the original nutrients being left over from the raw / fresh item).
While that is still a significant amount and I still plan on dehydrating a fair bit, I can't ignore the impressive differences in shelf life, nutrition retention, and texture retention of freeze drying vs dehydrating. So for us (and our priorities) getting a freeze drying unit that can preserve food which can be be relied upon for years to come was imperative.
If I had more land I might have considered just coping with the inevitable nutrient loss and go 100% "back to basics" for my crop preservation, but for now we do not have a lot of growing space, so every Goji berry, medicinal herb/fungi, Purple sweet potato, Black tomato, Golden beet, Moringa leaf, Tumeric rhizome, Ginger rhizome and Blueberry we grow counts and I need to keep all their goodness intact in order to feel I am properly caring for our bodies (and utilizing the growing space we have to its greatest potential).
With regards to emergency preparedness side of this device, in the event of a total collapse of modern civilization I am capable of using a combination of available conventionally stored garden crops, foraging, and improvising (even if it were to happen in the dead of winter) to survive (and care for my loved ones at home). So, for us, a freeze dryer is not about survival in the case of extreme emergencies, and more about comfort, wanting to be in optimal health in any situation, having portable/versatile food stores that can be grabbed on the go (should the need arise to leave in a hurry) and it is about my want to maximize my ability to preserve our most nutrient dense crops in peak condition (considering how much time and love I put into growing top quality.) So that is my take on freeze dryers in relation to emergency preparedness.