Swathes of rainforest and coral reefs are being destroyed by a nickel mining boom in Indonesia sparked by the Net Zero race to transition away from fossil fuels. The Telegraph has more.
Across the country, a major drive to exploit the country’s abundant natural resources is underway. These photographs [below] capture the sheer scale of the production process.
Rows of chimneys, belching smoke and fumes, tower over the schools and houses of what were once rural communities in scenes recalling the work of L.S. Lowry, whose paintings captured life in the industrial districts of North West England in the mid-20th century.
Indonesia is now the world’s largest nickel producer, with 15% of the globe’s lateritic nickel resources – typically low-grade deposits found near the surface.
But demand is still soaring in tandem with the rise of the electric vehicles (EVs), which depend on it for their batteries.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) predicts that global demand for the metal will grow at least 65% by 2030, and EVs and battery storage are set to take over from stainless steel as the largest end user of nickel by 2040.
Billion dollar Chinese firms anchor the nickel market in Indonesia, but they are often fed cheap ore by hundreds of smaller, mostly locally-owned mines that dot the rainforest. These mines have transformed once-peaceful agrarian villages and communities, providing economic opportunity but a health and environmental crisis looms from pollution.
In just three years, Indonesia has signed more than a dozen deals worth more than $15 billion for battery materials and electric vehicle production with global manufacturers including Hyundai, LG and Foxconn.
In 2021, Indonesia unveiled a new nickel smelter in North Morowali Regency of Central Sulawesi. It has been equipped to process 13 million tons of nickel ore annually.
Sulawesi, an Indonesian island east of Borneo, is a peaceful land known for its pristine coral reefs, dive sites and prehistoric cave paintings. But it is fast becoming an industrial heartland.
The chimneys of PT Obsidian Stainless Steel, a nickel processing complex, spew smoke into the air 24-hours a day, with flames lighting up the night sky.
Worth reading in full.
Of course, modern civilisation is built on industry so we mustn’t be overly precious about the natural world. But such extensive mining and industrial activities connected with the drive to Net Zero gives the lie to the oft-repeated claim that battery and electric technologies are ‘green’ and ‘good for the planet’.
The intense environmental destruction also highlights the double standards of those who make a big fuss about rainforest and coral reef degradation when they think they can blame ‘greenhouse gases’, but go very quiet when ‘green’ technologies are to blame.
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The people will see through it
An Italian acquaintance of ours thinks Meloni is a “Fascist”. I’m still waiting to read news reports from Italy of state bully-boys on the streets checking people’s papers, state censorship, mass restrictions of basic freedoms, forced medical treatment. Ah hold on, that was the previous government during “covid”…
Nowadays, Fascist is a gender id acquired by being referred to as Fascists by people who always refer to their political opponents as Fascists. No particular behaviour or support for any particular set of policies is required for that. Oppositon to any policy all good people want to see implemented is enough. And the good people are those to determine who the good and the bad people are.
Exactly
What I find frustrating is that “good” people with otherwise apparently functioning intellect fall for this. When you ask them to define “fascism” or name actions or policies of some hated political leader or group they are unable to. Pathetic.
Traditionally, German citizenship was based on the so-called ius sanguinis also used in other parts of the world: Someone is born as German if his parents are Germans. To this date, that’s stated in article 116 of the German constitution:
(1) Deutscher im Sinne dieses Grundgesetzes ist vorbehaltlich anderweitiger gesetzlicher Regelung, wer die deutsche Staatsangehörigkeit besitzt oder als Flüchtling oder Vertriebener deutscher Volkszugehörigkeit oder als dessen Ehegatte oder Abkömmling in dem Gebiete des Deutschen Reiches nach dem Stande vom 31. Dezember 1937 Aufnahme gefunden hat.
This refers to the rules who’d be considered German in place before 1945 with an addition that Germans expatriated for political reasons between 1933 and 1945 may reacquire German citizenship if they so desire. This was changed during the Schröder led red-green coalition (SPD and Greens) in power around the turn of the century. As Scholz was already a professional SPD politician at that time, he’s obviously aware of this and is just trying to Nazi-paint the people who were opposed to this change of the German constitution at that time for an audience which is young enough that it doesn’t remember this.
This means the real meaning of his statement is If you’re opposed to policies championed and implemtented by SPD and Greens the last time the governed in Germany, prepare for a visit by our secret state police. And he certainly means our, ie the Gestapo (secret state police) controlled by SPD and Greens. These guys are truly ‘democrats’ their political allies from the SED (currently callled Die Linke/ The Left) can be proud of.
Addition: The real name of this secret state police – Verfassungschutz – means secret service tasked with protecting the constitution against its enemies. Functionally, this is closer to the traditional GDR term Staatssicherheit/ Stasi — secret service tasked with protecting that state.
Love to hear from whoever downvoted this as to where RW has gone wrong
Correction: The Schröder-government didn’t really change the constitution but created additional law about granting German citizenship to foreigners without German heritage. The principal beneficaries of this were ethnic turks and their descendants who had come to Germany for work on initiative of earlier SPD governments. This created the paradoxical situation that there’s nowadays a fairy large distinctive ethnic group of people with their own culture and traditions who do not desire to integrate into German society and who’d never refer to themselves as Germans (the term, in its Turkish form of Alman, is actually an insult among members of this group) but who are nevertheless regarded as German by the state.
This renders Scholz’s ranting even less coherent: He’s in favour of certain laws passed under the aegis of his own party and its most important coalition partner (Greens). And these are supposed to be sacrosanct to all others. Different opinions or even real political opposition will not be tolerated, IOW, mere voters must not decide that they prefer something else instead.
Branding patriotic small c conservative voters across the West as “deplorables” by the arrogant Globalists isn’t going to work. Not in the USA; not in the EU and not in the UK.