Diary of an Acclimatised Beauty: Eventuating

I can’t believe it's June and we are halfway through the social season. Perhaps staying so long in St Moritz is to blame but I’m back in my childhood home in St John’s Wood where I can raid Judith’s (mummy’s) closet before Ascot. I just can’t buy better hats at any price and the flowers they use these days are synthetic (petroleum), but the hats themselves…Sinamay! The problem with Sinamay, (other than the too-obvious sheen), is it is harvested from abaca plants in the Philippines—a process that discards over 60 percent of this precious resource, which could be sold as bio-fuel in urban markets in place of illegal firewood and charcoal. One has to make an effort!  

Somewhere nearby the music and illuminations of a garden party came through lessening the faint roar of London. I threw open Judith’s bedroom window and could hear the lilt of women’s voices and deeper notes of males. The sounds and smells of the season seemed to have eaten into the very fabric of the city, and though I am deeply grateful to be living in California, the sense of excitement of a London season is not to be missed. Just then I heard Daddy’s voice below calling me to cocktails and so I hurried down the stairs.

‘Whose party?’ I asked.

‘I thought you’d know, given you’ve taken up permanent residence in your old room. Not that we mind having you here…’

‘Daddy!’ I charged.

‘It’s just that, from a practical perspective, it seems unsound to keep a house to which you have no intention of returning. Not to mention your Tesla. Or the rapidly deteriorating Tesla power grid you were so keen on owning. Darling, admit it. Your last trip to L.A. was the stuff of nightmares. You said so… tent cities, crime, Rolex nappers, and that governor asking you not to charge the very same electric vehicles he insisted all you comrades buy’.

‘We’re not com… Daddy, please!’

Back to the future.

‘All right Jennifer, What is it you want to talk about? How was your train trip?'

Nope. I wasn’t falling for that. He was hoping I’d get on a soap-box about improving my carbon footprint by travelling via train. ‘Funny thing that…’ I said. ‘I was on zoom the whole time with Al Gore, Bill Gates, Klaus Schwab AND King Charles! We’re working out a secret handshake’.

‘AND King Charles!’ He said, chuckling. It’s times like these I wish Judith were home a little more often. She’s good for keeping her oil exec husband and climate devotee daughter from quibbling.

‘So Daddy…’ I began again. ‘I want you to help me figure out how to help the Freemans. They are a couple from Maine, who own a vast repository of lithium. Maybe even the world’s largest lithium deposit, which we need for electric vehicle batteries. As you know, lithium doesn’t occur naturally, it is in other elements, like spodumene—a mineral. But the various agencies there won’t allow them to mine the mineral which they claim is a metal, and open mining of metals isn’t allowed there’.

‘Well most minerals contain metals—limestone contains calcium. Why don’t you find out if they mine limestone in Maine? I think that’s your get-around’.

‘I have, and they do. Unfortunately they allow limestone mining but are giving them the run-around saying first one agency handles it, then another, then they claim they don’t—they’ve even had to sue a governing body to demand the other agency admit they DO handle it. It’s a mess’.

‘And how is it you think I can help?’

Try eating lithium.

‘Well you got your Keystone Pipeline done’.

‘And we see how well that worked out. But I’m a bit confused here… you do understand that lithium mining is nearly the worst thing for the planet? I know you think you are saving the planet by demanding electric cars, but charging stations still run on fossil fuels, the toxic used e-batteries are going to pile up eventually, and lithium mining takes an absolutely dreadful toll on the environment, not to mention the inhumane conditions the workers are subjected to’.

‘Yes, but that’s just it. WE will do a better job. The U.S. I mean. They will do a much better job for the environment, and for workers than what is happening in Africa and South America’.

‘Ah, that’s your plan is it. But the states are funny when it comes to saving the environment. Perhaps you forgot that your beloved California chased all of its industry away… under the guise of providing better air quality, etc’.

‘But that WAS better for California. The air quality did improve’.

‘Yes, for five minutes. But you chased all of the industry to China, the biggest planet offender of them all. They certainly don’t “do better” as you say, and the smog just returned to California, via China, in a few short years. So you wrecked your economy so that the most irresponsible country on the planet could do worse than you ever would have done’.

‘OKAY so I guess not better. But the lithium deposit can’t be relocated to China. So HA! My idea works.’

Did somebody say "China"?

‘Which matters zero in that country.’

‘What are you talking about??’

‘My pipeline, actually. It is an indisputable fact that the safest possible means of transporting oil is via a pipeline. The worst for the environment is via ships and trucks. But that is exactly what is happening right now. Even worse if a spill occurs’.

‘OKAY but if e-vehicles are eventually better for the planet…’

‘Which I dispute–'

‘OKAY but eventually… and if mining in the U.S. would inarguably be done better than elsewhere…’

‘Well clearly they can and will argue, but go with your earlier comment that “eventually e-vehicles will be better” Eventually is something you environmentalists love to posit as fact. I say eventually for things that are really true… like eventually discarded e-batteries will pile up. They will. You say “eventually” when you are really only hoping it will be true. And it works for you every time. So make your argument with your tried and tested interpretation of the word eventually’.

‘Ah, yes. You’re right! An entire EV industry is booming over the possibility. The thing is… we DO know it will happen eventually’.

‘Despite all evidence to the contrary. And if you do know, it’s because you know you will control the data’.

‘Em… whatever… but OK, thank you. I will go with "eventually"!’

Daddy’s a good egg. And in the end he will come round.