Hello, this is Max Sloves, Unite and Heal America with Matt Matern. Sitting in for Matt today wishing him well. And our guests this afternoon is Max Wilbert. Max is an author, and activist, photo journalist. Max, you seem like you have a pretty, pretty deep resume. Tell us a little bit about yourself. To start us off here.

Sure. Yeah. So I grew up in Seattle. And, you know, I grew up in a family that was interested in environmental issues interested in political issues. So, by the time I was coming of age, politically, in Seattle, the WTO protests were going on, then you had the the Iraq War and Afghanistan war breakout. So it was a very politically active time. And I started to get engaged in some of the issues that are happening around our world, and dove into the environmental movement.

And so over the past couple of decades, I’ve been part of a lot of different social movements and people’s movements. I’m a writer, I recently released a book that I co authored, called bright green lies, how the environmental movement lost its way and what we can do about it. And about a year ago, I was involved in starting this protest against attacker paths lithium mine.

Let’s talk about backer paths and lithium mining but mining in general. It gives a little background on on Thakur paths and the scope and magnitude of project that is being proposed there.

Sure. So because global warming is such a big issue, that’s something that I totally agree with. A lot of people are concerned with how do we reduce carbon emissions and one of the main proposed solutions to that is transitioning to electric cars, and transitioning to wind and solar and other forms of renewable energy. This requires a lot of batteries because evey cars run off batteries. And wind and solar power are intermittent, right, sometimes the wind isn’t blowing, sometimes the sun is shining, you got to store that power sometime.

So you can have reliable source. And that needs batteries, among other ways of storing energy. So there’s this huge boom in demand right now for lithium all around the world, massive explosions in demand. And it’s projected to just continue to grow at a very rapid pace over the coming couple of decades. That means that places like Sacher paths where there are these big lithium deposits are under threat. So factor pass is located in Northern Nevada, right on the Oregon border, it’s kind of close to where Idaho, Oregon and Nevada all come together.

It’s a pretty remote site on this path between two different mountain ranges, where a mining company plans to go in and blow up almost 28 square miles of land to extract lithium. And this would be a multi billion dollar project. It would provide enough lithium for about a million electric cars every year. And it would cause harm to some pretty large watersheds and a lot of very valuable wildlife habitat in that area, as well as some important cultural sites in the surrounding communities.

So ever since this mine was proposed, people have been speaking up and getting pretty upset about it. But the resistance really amped up on January 15 Last year after the BLM issued their main federal permit for the project and myself and my friend will fall went out and set up a protest camp on the site of the proposed mine

I don’t think people really I think it’s very difficult for for someone to to picture and really have a sense of the magnitude and scope of of these of these minds. I don’t know I think like in the in the popular imagination like like mining is something that happens underground. So they like maybe it’s dangerous, but it’s kind of out of sight out of mind.

Can you help explain like like how these, this type of mind mining process is different? Not to say it the old way was all that great. But what are we looking at here like like if you were to look out over one of these mines, like what would you see?

Well, the this be a way for people to get a sense of how much land we’re talking about. A football field is just over an acre in size, and this proposed project is almost 18,000 acres. So it’s a very, very large area, if you wanted to walk from one end of the project to the other, you’re talking about six or seven miles of walking. So it’s absolutely massive. This type of mining project, it would be an open pit mine. So essentially, it’s a mountaintop removal mine. It’s very similar to coal mining and Appalachia, or many other types of mining around the world.

And the reality is mining is a pretty destructive industry. It’s a very destructive industry. And it always has been, you know, in fact, there are mines that date back to the Roman Empire, that are still toxic, that are still draining out toxic materials into watersheds and poisoning communities and livestock. This is just due to the fact that mining is fundamentally destructive. Literally, what we’re talking about here is you take an intact landscape that has wildlife and plants and is part of a watershed and has creeks and drainage is it’s a place where people go to hunt and gather plants and medicinal foods and just go to camp and enjoy how beautiful it is up there, especially in the spring with the wildflowers.

And the sage grouse doing their amazing mating dances out there in the in the spring, this this threatened bird species, you take all that and you you bulldoze all the life off the top of the land. And then you use explosives and or heavy equipment to rip open the land. And, you know, of course, there are things that can be done too. They call it reclamation, is basically the recovery process. At the end of the mind, this mind is projected to last about 41 years, potentially quite a bit longer if they expand into some adjacent areas where there’s also lithium.

So that’s a long time. And the ecologist say that all this restoration work after the end of the line like this, they it doesn’t really work very well. Because the soil is largely destroyed, the topsoil is gone, it’s buried, it’s mixed in with his deep mineral soils, the biological integrity of the community is gone. And so you know, in a sense, it’s like cutting a human being to pieces and then sort of sewing them back together at the end and hoping that they’ll that they’ll work, it’s not going to it’s not going to be the same obviously, it’s not a functional living creature no more than you’ll have a functional living ecosystem at the end of a mind like this.

So they’re very, very destructive projects. And they occur on very large scales. And the mining company, lithium Americas wants to say that this is a green mine, it’s a sustainable mine, it’s actually good for the planet. But what they don’t talk about is, you know, the 200 semi trucks a day, bringing in sulfur soy source from oil refineries, as their main chemical ingredient for processing, right, so they’re talking about switching away from fossil fuels.

Yet their process is completely dependent upon fossil fuels, not just for the transportation of the materials and heavy equipment that they’re going to be using on site, but actually for the chemical processing of the lithium itself. So we look at this project as a case of greenwashing, a case of a company pretending to be green and pretending to be environmentally friendly, when the reality is that there’s simply not.

There are a lot of sad ironies and a process like this. And as you were speaking, I was kind of thinking to myself, it’s not like, it’s not like pulling a blanket off a bed. And and the only thing you have to do to remake the bed, just put the blanket back on, you rip the entire landscape off the earth on a magnitude of miles. The impact is going to be extremely severe, extremely severe.

And for all intents and purposes, purposes permanent Is that fair to say like you we could talk about things being coming back to steady state in several 1,000 years, but for all intensive purposes, we’re talking about, as you noted, Roman minds are still polluting the ecosystem. So we these are these are essentially actions that are they’re indelible.

Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. And with all the other threats to some of the species who are declining who live in this region. The question is, are those species even going to exist in 41 years to have a chance of repopulating whatever restored area remains.

Yeah? Do you happen to know, the state of technology for for batteries? Right now is lithium, pretty much the state of the art is that is there anything out there that’s as viable as lithium, or doesn’t matter what any alternative just be as destructive to, to access.

So lithium is definitely the dominant battery technology. It it, battery technologies are very slow to develop. And so for now, lithium is basically the name of the game, when it comes to electric vehicle batteries. There are some other options for grid energy storage out there. But many of those have their own issues as well, which, you know, may be outside of the scope of our conversation today. But suffice it to say lithium is very important for this industry as it currently exists.

Okay, so, you know, and that’s what that’s what I was gonna say what we’re stuck with, but I think like your argument is we’re not necessarily stuck with it that that we have options. One of the things that I’d like to talk about a little more and in our other segments, I am Max Sloves, I’m sitting in for Matt Matern, and on Unite and Heal America. We’re speaking today with Max Wilbert and we’ll be back.

Hello, this is Max Sloves I’m sitting in for Matt Matern. Unite and Heal America with Matt Matern. Today we’re speaking with Max Wilbert, we’re talking about lithium mining and some of the issues that that it is very, very serious issues that it poses to the health of our environment.

One of the things I wanted to ask you about Max is the we’re mining lithium, as we as we discuss, we’re mining lithium supply batteries for cleaner vehicles and and basically, consumption of energy that that is being promoted as as less damaging to the environment because it leads to less emissions from from the end source.

But what goes into producing that? I don’t think it’s really immediately apparent to a lot of people when they drive something like a hybrid or electric car. What kind of impacts on the environment went into creating that product? Could you speak to some of that in the context of lithium mining, and perhaps beyond?

Sure, well, you know, the great Indian physicist and ecologist Vandana Shiva talks about how when we look at clean, we can’t just talk about carbon emissions, we need to look at all the ecological consequences from cradle to grave of a given product or technology. And that’s absolutely true with electric cars and these batteries as well. The International Energy Agency estimates that electric cars require about four times as many critical minerals as regular gasoline powered cars, which are polluting and destructive themselves.

Of course, environmentalists have known that for many decades, but it’s it’s a mistake to assume that electric cars simply because they have no emissions coming out of the tailpipe don’t have any ecological harm associated with them. In fact, producing an electric car releases something like nine tons of greenhouse gas emissions on average. And that means just very simply, the more electric cars you produce, the more greenhouse gas emissions you’re going to release.

Now, there may be less greenhouse gas emissions released than if you had built fossil fuel powered cars instead. But you’re still producing quite a bit of greenhouse gas emissions. This is a major problem, because scientists are telling us that we need you know, 8090 100% emissions reductions within a pretty short timeframe within the next several decades to avoid the worst impacts of global warming. And of course, that’s not even to get into the issues in terms of biodiversity, water quality, toxic pollution, the other environmental issues, that many of which are just as serious as global warming, but perhaps get less coverage in the media than they should.

You know, this issue with lithium I think is very important because it’s a great example of a false solution. You know, it’s a good Rate example of an industry, the electric car industry that serves to make trillions of dollars off of this transition to electric vehicles literally trillions. Running a very effective marketing campaign to convince people that their cars are not only not destructive, they’re actually good for the planet. And they’re using one snippet of truth. That’s always the most effective lies right are based on one small truth and then they build a larger untruth around that. And the truth is that they don’t release carbon out of the tailpipe.

The larger untruth is that they’re good for the planet, or they’re ecologically friendly. That’s just completely not true. And as long as we’re living in a consumeristic society, in which most people own or at least aspire to own, you know, a two ton hunk of rare earth metals and iron and plastics, that sits in their driveway and that they use to hurtle around the planet at vast speeds, to get them to work and recreation and play and family and all these different things. And to them all, perhaps is, it’s a delusion to think that that’s environmentally friendly.

And so one of the arguments that I’ve been making from the beginning of getting involved in this campaign is that, you know, the situation attacker paths really cause us to start thinking more deeply and more critically about the ecological crisis that we’re facing. The biodiversity crisis, the desertification crisis, the the deforestation, crisis, all of these different issues and how they are coming together in our time, and how our way of life, our consumeristic, industrial, high energy, modern culture plays a very big role in that. And I think that it calls us to, to consider much larger changes than just swapping out what’s under the hood of our cars.

Yeah, I mean, it’s it’s, it’s a pretty mean for all the bluster and opposition to emissions mandates and reduction of emissions. Really, all it’s demanding is that everyone buy a new car or COURAGING marketplace for everyone to replace this this huge object with another huge resource intensive object. And, and I guess it just it begs the question, what what are the alternatives? How do we, it there’s so many layers to this that kind of drive me nuts.

And one is the IS is the way even the way we talk about it? Yeah, the way we talk about global warming and and carbon emissions, I do, there’s a marketplace for ideas as much as there’s a fireplace for objects. And I get a little frustrated sometimes that we’re not talking more about water pollution and other points or solutions.

Because those have really, really immediate impacts on on people’s health and welfare, odd ecosystems, health and welfare. Is there a sense of the potential impacts that that the project attacker pass would have on water resources in that area?

Absolutely, yeah, this project would use 4.6 million gallons of water per day. That’s in the driest state in the country, Nevada. And that water would come from the Queen River Valley, which is an aquifer that’s already over allocated already pulling more water out of it, then is being replenished by rain and snow every year. So it’s Fossil water, it’s it’s essentially a different form of mining, you know, instead of mining minerals, they’re mining water, just old ancient water down in the ground.

And it’s already there already, you know, drawing down this reserve of water and desert defying estate. I mean, longtime Nevada residents know that the state’s in a prolonged downward trend when it comes to surface water spring flows, river flows and so on. And global warming is is exacerbating that problem. And so, you know, more mines like this are not the answer.

There are 1,000s of lithium mining claims all across the state of Nevada right now. And and other types of mines as well. And each of those would use quite a bit of water. So the impacts to the water not just in terms of of the consumption of water, but also water pollution are a big big concern with this project and and other types of lithium mining, not just here, but elsewhere around the planet as well.

If you look at lithium mining in Chile, in Australia, in Tibet, in other areas around the world, you see huge amounts of water use and water pollution. And you see local communities being very concerned and upset about the impact this has on on wildlife on their ability to survive in these regions.

So there’s there’s the upstream impact of, of overtaxing the water resources necessary to operate the mind and then the imagining that the downstream impacts are pretty severe as well.

Absolutely. Yeah, this project would, you know, one of the main things they would do is, is dig up and mobilize some of the potentially dangerous minerals that are securely locked underground right now. So things like arsenic, antimony, mercury, uranium, radon, other toxic radioactive and hazardous substances, that right now are pretty much safe, deep underground, this project would dig them up, it would put them in the water, and it would aerosolize them and turn them into dust that would then blow onto the nearby communities as well.

That’s horrifying, the aerosolization of these these toxic materials, that is not something that that have even crossed my mind. And, and that that’s a real concern. And it’s something in our offices located in Southern California. And, you know, there are various parts of southern California that are famous for this phenomenon that you just described. an aquifer that was those overdrawn.

And the desertification written, resulting in these dust storms that affect communities, not just nearby, but but sometimes 100 miles away. And it’s, so it kind of brings us back to these two issues, I think are so private, the way we talk about these things, the marketplace of ideas, the way things are sold to us. You talked about greenwashing earlier, and our patterns of behavior that that is one of the most difficult things that people find in their lives.

Do we have new diets every single year, every single every three months, there’s a new diet because people have trouble changing their behavior. If you just pick one and stuck with it, you’d probably be fine. But we always need a new one because we have problems changing our behavior.

So that’s something I’d like to talk about a little bit more in the next segment. I’m Max Sloves. I’m sitting in for Matt Matern today on Unite and Heal America with Matt Matern. We are talking to max Wilbert and we’ll be back in.

Hello, Max Sloves. I’m sitting in for Matt Matern today on Unite and Heal America with Matt Matern. We’re speaking today with Max Wilbert, author, activist, environmental activist specifically for the purposes of our conversation today.

And Max, I just say I normally know a little bit more about things I interview people about but there are a few things that I don’t know about. So very excited to have you here to speak about them. One is the concept of Jevons paradox. Can you speak on what what that paradox is and how it relates to some of what we’ve been discussing in terms of consumption and human behavior?

Sure, well, you know, Jevons paradox it comes from from England in the early days of the Industrial Revolution, but I like to explain it using an analogy that makes sense to people now. So I’m gonna ask you a question. And I want to hear your your genuine, you know, just gut response to it, which would be more harmful to the planet, if every car on the planet got one, one mile per gallon of gas, or every car on the planet got 100 miles per gallon of gas.

My gut, my gut reaction would be that if every car on the planet got one mile per gallon, that would be worse.

So Jevons paradox is basically the idea that that gut response is sometimes wrong, that more efficiency isn’t always better for the planet. And the reason for that sort of becomes clearer if we explore this idea Have a little more. Because if every car on the planet gets 100 miles per gallon, all of a sudden driving is really cheap, right?

So people have much higher mobility than they used to have. That means people are going to drive more, the culture is likely to become more car dependent, you’re likely to influence things like suburban sprawl and urban planning policy and how cities are built, you’re likely to influence government budgets to build more parking garages. freeways, you are likely to create economies of scale where because driving is so cheap, everyone wants to drive more people can afford to drive. And so more people buy cars, which drives down the cost of each individual car.

And so more and more cars are built. So 100 miles per gallon doesn’t only increase the efficiency of each person’s individual car in a vacuum, it creates a very different social and cultural and economic situation around cars in general, right? Now, the opposite would be true if every car got one mile per gallon, because it would create a very strong disincentive to driving. Right driving would be incredibly expensive.

It would cost you know multiple dollars to run to the store every time you went. If you wanted to go visit your family 100 miles away, you’re looking at spending significant money on on gasoline to get there hundreds and hundreds of dollars, right. And flying would basically be out of the question if if the engines were correspondingly inefficient.

So if every car got one mile per gallon, all of those incentives are pushing in the opposite direction. They’re pushing the culture to incentivize walking and bicycling and human power transport. They’re pushing towards localization of our culture, and towards local food, local economies, local government, local political structures, walkable communities, local agriculture, and so on.

So that’s obviously sort of a dramatized example, but it helps us understand this idea that efficiency isn’t always good for the planet. Sometimes efficiency is good for our wallet, or good for, you know, a business’s productivity, but it’s very bad for the planet. In fact, and I think this helps us to explain some of the issues that we’re seeing with these things like electric cars, right? Electric cars are more efficient than gasoline powered cars, they’re cheaper to run.

They have some advantages when it comes to efficiency. But that’s efficiency from our perspective, as people who buy industrial products, as people who are responsible for their maintenance as people who are paying for the electricity or the gasoline to run them. That’s not from the planet’s perspective. And so this one word efficiency, can have two different definitions, you know, you can, you can use that efficiency to use less, right?

If in that theoretical world, the 100 mile per gallon car was driven the same amount as the one mile per gallon car, then yes, it would be better for the planet to have 100 mile per gallon car, because vastly less gas would be consumed. But that’s, that doesn’t happen in a vacuum.

Right? None of these changes happen in a vacuum. And so Jevons paradox, more broadly helps us explain that technological advancement does not always produce the positive ecological outcomes that we want to see. And, you know, another example of this is the American home, which is that the average efficiency energy efficiency of American Homes has gone up by quite a bit over recent decades.

But at the same time, the size of the average American home has grown correspondingly. And so the overall energy consumption has stayed the same. But houses have gotten bigger. And that means people need more furniture, they fill their houses with more products, they have larger garages, so they keep multiple cars, and then instead of one, maybe, as it perhaps used to be more common.

And so the embodied energy that’s used to build the house itself, the wood, the drywall, the the paint, the lighting, fixtures, and so on, all of that is increased. And so the impact on the planet is actually increased as well. And so it’s another example of where we have these counterintuitive results. And where we need to think a little bit more deeply about these issues.

And I think this is a case these type of situations are where we’re really vulnerable to be taken advantage of by advertisers, especially, I think it’s really easy to get fooled in a situation like this. When somebody says, this product or that product is better for the planet. We need to investigate that because Sometimes it is and sometimes it isn’t. But oftentimes, what is being lost in that whole conversation is whether or not we should be living in a consumeristic society in which our sense of well being is based on how much we own and how much money is in the bank.

And really, our sense of national progress and well being is based on GDP, and is based on economic growth. So these are really some much larger questions that I think we need to be asking. And if you look at countries like New Zealand, Bhutan, there are a few countries around the world that are really leaders in trying to change those measures, and really look at things instead of wealth to really look at things like people’s health and well being and happiness.

And to measure those, because often those really aren’t linked to wealth, as long as you’ve got your basic material needs taken care of. And I think if you look at the rates of, of mental health issues of depression, and anxiety that we have in our culture here in the United States, I don’t think this way of life, this consumeristic culture, and this workaholic culture that we live in, is really making us happy. It’s not really, you know, doing great for a lot of us here.

And so I think that, you know, it would be a lot better for us and for the planet, if we started to build a different conception of what we want, you know, as a society, what we’re really here for what we’re really here to do, I don’t think we’re here to accumulate goods and accumulate wealth, and anything like that, I think we’re here to, to have a human experience.

And I think that the more we can do that, in harmony with the natural world, and with these other forms of life all around us, not only the better lives we’re going to have as individuals, but the better world we’re going to leave behind for our children, grandchildren and future generations.

Yeah, I think when when people see something firsthand, they they value it more when people see something firsthand, they appreciate it more when we externalize the costs of production to remote communities, oftentimes entirely offshore. I mean, that that’s one thing that I think you and I have been able to witness in our lifetime, was, you know, the externalization, the cost production, you know, just ship ship production offshore, so that you don’t have to think about the impact on workers.

You don’t have to think about the impact on environment, like it’s out of sight, out of mind. And so you as you were talking about, Jevons paradox, it just got me thinking in terms of you, even if you’d have the 100 mile per gallon car is, is favorable. It’s not favorable, if it includes, if you’re achieving that efficiency through costs that you’re not actually paying for.

If you’re subsidizing the low cost of an efficient car, by stepping on the neck of some worker in a foreign country, or polluting the water of an aquifer in in Northern Nevada, you are you really paying for a cheaper car, you’re really paying the true cost. And I think like that’s where I see sort of a dovetail between the traditional economic philosophies that our nation has been built on, and alternative ways of approaching the way we consume is is okay, well, sure, like let’s think of things really transactionally we haven’t been actually participating in the transaction.

We haven’t actually been paying the true cost of the items that we use. So what are we subsidizing that we’re subsidizing that on, on marginalized communities on the present and future of the environment that we hope to enjoy and benefit from? I’d like to talk about these things a little bit more in our last segment, and, and also help direct people to resources they can access to, to think about these concepts, a little more.

Or so you, you’ve laid things out so well with such clarity, to direct people to other resources, where they can see like really clearly like how these things are connected, how they might be able to be changed, I’m Max Sloves sitting in for Matt Matern on Unite and Heal America. We’re continuing our conversation with Max Wilbert about lithium mining, parents consumption, what we can do to possibly change gage to make things a little better. We’ll be back in a moment

Hello, this is Max Sloves I’m sitting in for Matt Matern today. United and Heal America with Matt Matern, sending our best and Matt hoping he gets well soon. And continue our conversation with Max Wilbert, we’ll be talking about issues related to lithium mining, patterns of consumption.

By the way, all these things tie together and it sort of like the tapestry of, of behavior and impacts on the environment, both immediate and long term. And one of the things that this keeps coming back to these types of conversations keep coming back. Is is human behavior. And so what can we do to change the way we approach these issues and the way we think about these issues in the way we act? Most, most, probably most importantly, even if they’re small shifts and changes.

It’s really action in one way or another, that that will collectively have the greatest, the greatest impact. Maximum. I know, this last year, you have co authored a book, titled bright green lights, how the environmental movement lost its way, and what we can do about it. This was published last year 2021. And I guess, given my intro, what leaves out to me about the title is the word do what we can do about it.

Could you tell us a little bit about this book? And and perhaps some of the some of the insight that it may give us as to the types of things that we can do about the issues we’re facing right now?

Sure, sure. Well, I think one of the most important arguments that we make in the book is that, you know, global warming is a very serious issue. And a lot of people are very scared with it for about it for for good reason. You know, I actually spent time in the Arctic myself, I’ve walked on falling permafrost, you know, global warming is, is pretty terrifying. And what it’s doing to our world is terrifying. It’s also a symptom. It’s not the root cause of our problem. It’s a symptom of our culture’s broken relationship to the planet to ecology to the land.

And we’re not going to address that symptom and expect it to go away. It’s a little bit like a doctor, saying, okay, you’ve got a fever, I’m going to throw you in a tub full of ice, and not investigate at all, what’s actually causing this fever, whether it’s an infection, or virus or something else, right. So we really are making the argument that we need to think more deeply about these issues. And we need to fundamentally change our relationship to the planet.

And one of the ways that we can do that begins, I think, in each of us in in our hearts and our minds, and the way we relate to the world, is we can shift our allegiance. And what I mean by that is that ultimately, every breath of air we take every bite of food that we eat, every stitch of clothing that we wear, and and the rooms that we live under, comes from the planet, it comes from this world, and is provided by a living world. And that’s where we need to have our allegiance. Right. I think that so often, we get confused into having allegiance to our gadgets, our phones, our jobs, to a political party, a certain ideology, a certain country.

But really, when it all comes down to it, we are all fully dependent on this planet planet Earth, the only known habitable planet in the universe, for our existence and the existence of future generations. And the culture that we live in. The economy that we live in is destroying the ability of this planet to support life. That is a disaster. And I think that once we begin to shift our allegiance, then we start to understand more easily that things like electric cars aren’t necessary.

They’re actually luxury goods. You know, things like iPhones and you know, 24/7 access to Netflix are not necessary. They are luxury goods. And they come all of these modern conveniences that we become so used to that I enjoy just like anyone else right you know, I am Enjoy watching the movie as much as the next person, right? I’m not, I’m not saying I don’t enjoy it, or that it’s not enjoyable. What I’m saying is that these are luxuries. And they come with costs, like you were saying earlier. And we need to be very honest about those costs.

And I think we need to change our behavior because some of those costs are not worth paying for what we’re getting out of it. And you know, Lewis Mumford, one of the greatest American philosophers of all time, he talked about what he called the magnificent bribe, which was this idea that, you know, in the past, we used to live under kings and tyrants and rulers like that emperors, right. But when fossil fuels came onto the scene, all of a sudden energy and material goods were so abundant, that almost everyone in the society could partake in those benefits to some degree.

And he called this a magnificent bribe, that allowed people to sort of participate in the Empire or the dominion over the planet. And, you know, Mumford. One of his conclusions was that this is ultimately a self destructive process. It’s a suicide of blowout, you know, some writers have talked about this as being like a party, where everyone gets way too drunk and does way too many crazy drugs. And it’s only going to happen one time, and then it’s over, you know, the easily accessible fossil fuels are gone. And so they’re down to fracking and deep sea ocean drilling and tar sands, right?

The same is true of pretty much every other major mineral on Earth, most of the old growth forests have been cut down, the soils in the Great Plains are really not in good shape. The ocean, the life in the oceans is is very heavily degraded. And what have we gotten out of it?

Right, we’ve gotten this sort of modern consumer culture blowout that is unlikely to last far into the future. And I think if you take a historical perspective, this is actually pretty common for empires or large societies, dominant societies and civilizations to undermine their own ecological Foundation, and then collapse or fall apart. And that doesn’t necessarily mean overnight, often time that that takes generations for that for that collapse, or sort of simplification of society to play out.

But I think it’s likely that’s the direction we’re headed in. Because we are fully dependent on these things, you know, and we’ve seen the fragility of these global systems, these global supply chains with the COVID crisis, we’ve we’ve seen how dependent we are for basic necessities like food and different types of products, on things that are shipped from 1000s and 1000s of miles away. I don’t think that’s going to last into the future. And so my hope, really is that people will continue to fight destructive projects like the factor pass lithium mine, they’re happening all over the world, unfortunately.

And each one of these projects that happens is another nail in the coffin of global ecology and climate stability and environmental stability as a whole. So the more land, the more wild places we can protect the better. I think at the same time, people need to be pushing politically for vision around these solutions, because I think our political leaders largely aren’t willing to engage on these issues.

They’re either living in fossil fuel delusion, or they’re living in a delusion that electric cars and windmills will save us and everything else can remain the same, we’ll just swap out the energy source, and we’ll be fine. I think both of those are total delusions. And I think the fossil fuel delusion will lead us into a climate apocalypse. And the delusion around electric vehicles and wind turbines and solar will likely lead us into that same apocalypse, perhaps a little bit slower. But I think it’s a similar false solution.

And so, you know, in our book, we really talk about putting your faith in the natural world, because this planet is really good at healing. And so often, the problem is, us the problem is something we’re doing wrong. And when we get out of the way, when we stop destroying, the world starts to flourish. And you can see that over and over again, whether you’re looking at Yellowstone or Heart Mountain refuge or, you know, different marine reserves or whatever area you want to talk about.

When we are willing to humble ourselves and participate in the ecological dance of everything all around us, rather than trying to dominate then we can live good and the planet can continue to thrive and flourish. So that’s what we’re trying to do at that capacity is pushed back on this idea that we need these luxury goods called electric cars, and show people a different way.

Tied up, why stacker passes, it’s not just a location, it’s not just a mine, it is a project that is going to have devastating impacts on the environment around it. But I really love the way you frame it as as important to recognize as part of a greater expression of human behavior that we need to at the very least recognize, you know, I think that that’s really the problem I see right now. Is it like what you’re describing is something that that people have trouble even recognizing, and we all know that until you recognize a problem, it’s really hard to address.

So I look forward to reading Bright Green Lies. I hope other people will take a look as well. Are there other resources, websites, organizations that people can turn to to learn more about their career paths or any of the other issues that we’ve discussed it?

Yeah, if you check out protectthackerpass.org That’s “Thacker,” thacker pass.org. You can find essays more information about the mind and contribute or get involved in in their opposition to it. We’re hoping to have some good news in the next week or two.

So keep your eyes peeled and we’re going to keep up the fight and we hope you’ll join us and and also get involved in whatever fights for the living world are happening in your area.

Max, your work is courageous. It’s important, and I’m so glad that we had the opportunity to speak with you today. Thank you for joining us.

This has been Max Sloves sitting it for Matt Matern on Unite and Heal America with Matt Matern. Today we spoke with Max Wilbert, please take a look at the book he co authored bright green lies, how the environmental movement lost its way and what we can do about it and explores activism at the factory paths project.

Thanks so much.