(01-27-2021 11:35 AM)Hambone10 Wrote:  So a question for GND folks...

Right now, a lot of 'rare earth' metals used in the types of things that are necessary for conversions to solar and electric cars etc etc come from war torn parts of the world with little oversight in terms of conservation... and absolutely no power of the US (short of military action) to monitor or oversee. Same with replacing the oil that we currently need that might need to be replaced if we produced less ourselves...

Do we have better oversight over oil and gas wells in West Texas or Kuwait or Lithium from Chile or Cobalt from the Congo? It seems rather silly to argue that we don't have the manpower in the US to regulate every oil well (despite having policing powers) but that we somehow have greater abilities in other nations.

If we discovered vast caches of lithium (or some other such metal) on tiny fractions of Federal lands that would make battery storage so cheap that we could quite literally solve the issues of solar/wind battery storage for the US or potentially even the entire world... should we be holding dear those sometimes century old arbitrary set-asides of lands? Or would we be seeking ways to accomplish the goals of those set-asides (by perhaps exchange 'this' 20 acres for 'those' 20 acres) while furthering the greater goals of a) solving our issues and b) ensuring oversight by confining such exploration to that area? If we discovered 'element x' on Federal lands that allowed us to make a 10 pound 10kwh battery with unlimited life-cycles in enough volume to put one in every home in the country and every car or truck on the road... would we find some way to 'make that work'?

My point being that (suspecting the answer is 'yes') these arguments over 'federal lands' most often have almost no basis in reality. The ability to avoid importing oil is a national security issue as well as an environmental one... and while 'saying no' does certainly make that goal less likely and arguably forces people to invest elsewhere, until those investments pan out, we are quite often worse off... and if those investments NEVER pan out, we are permanently 'worse off'. I support the environment and there are a few nations where I support their abilities to manage environmental issues to be similar or in some cases, even better than ours.... but this isn't true for many/most of the nations that control most of these green technology needs. It makes no sense that we continue to deficit spend while arguing that we can't invest in green tech while continuing to improve and refine our other capabilities.... especially when you consider that (as an example) if we developed a reliable electric plane to replace the 757, that nations all over the world would be lining up to purchase our (now vastly cheaper) 757's... and that they would go from nations that had 1 gas powered car for every 4 people to one that like us, had 1 such car for every person, and while all of ours might be electric, 1 in 4 of those cars would be electric.