There is no extractive process that will negate the metabolic rifts caused by the Anthropocene and the Capitalocene. Capital accumulation depends on extractive industries. Commodity production cannot suffice to drive economies forward. Value is realized in commodity products by means of an extended cognitive and bodily labor process. This is capitalism’s logline.
Commodities like oil, minerals, palm and soybean oil all have a use-value and exchange-value. That exchange-value is only realized when these commodities are exchanged and sold in the associated production processes. The circulatory rhythm of boom and bust within capitalism and the system’s longer-term tendencies towards crisis dictate accumulation’s path and project. This occurs in both the presence or absence of primary products extracted though mining or agribusiness. The crash in oil prices following the coronavirus pandemic proves this. Financialization shows that “mining” can be literal like minerals, or a value-form that sees its transformation into figurative data like crypto-securitization.
”The word artificial hides the fact that behind artificial intelligence there is labor and mineral extraction (Karl Marx’s Commodity fetishism). It is present naturally (minerals) and has life and conscience (people that label data, train algorithms or extract those minerals).”
Recent oligarchic rampages like those of Sam Bankman-Fried and Oleg Deripaska erase any notion of freely competitive behavior and demonstrate the role of political economy in the chaos of corrupt, creative, capital destruction. Climate crisis signifies the limits of global capitalism.
The regional and local state become further engaged as with developments in California’s Salton Sea. Indigenous property rights and the necessity of boom-town regulation make development and lawfare draw a much deeper cultural arc including the narrative drawn with media representations making the Salton Sea lithium mining more like Alien or The Godfather, considering the accumulative agents at work and the exhausting of other resources like water. The Ukraine-Russian war is about commodities and extractive rights more than hegemony or imperial conflict. All arguments remain about global sustainability.
More fundamentally, the ruling class cannot enrich itself as a whole by capitalists simply robbing one another. No new surplus value would be created in such a process. Instead, one capitalist will gain at the expense of the others’ loss. As Marx wrote, “the class as a whole cannot defraud itself”.23
According to David Ricardo, as long as trade was “free” and without tariffs, then specialisation and comparative advantage would create a more efficient and effective system of world trade. More recently, the theory has been augmented by Eli Heckscher and Bertil Ohlin, who argue that an “equilibrium” is created on world markets by migration of capital, feeding industries that utilise comparative advantage and starving those that are inefficient.7 Based on this logic, the international financial institutions emphasised capital accumulation strategies focused on world trade and frictionless cross-border financial transactions. In practice, this meant the elimination of import tariffs and exchange rate controls. This shift led to a deepening of exploitation around the world and a new global division of labour that fitted into transnational global supply chains of everything from food to microchips. The expropriation and commodification of the natural world and its resources was part and parcel of these changes. The World Bank encouraged extractivism by rewriting mining codes, and regulatory reforms transformed the rules surrounding taxation, royalties, the repatriation of capital across borders, licensing and the environment.8
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Theoretical models of a “new” extractivism have arisen in both Marxist and non-Marxist traditions. A common theme is that of continuing imperialism, as imperialist states take advantage of the neoliberal relaxation of tariffs and exchange controls to further exploit dependent nations. For example, the Marxist economist David Harvey focuses on “accumulation by dispossession”, arguing that neoliberalism is linked to an era of “new imperialism” and a revival of “primitive accumulation” through land-grabbing in the poorer world by the richer. Harvey claims that this new imperialism is a spatio-temporal fix, which “is a metaphor for solutions to capitalist crises through temporal deferment and geographical expansion”.22 However, there are problems with such an approach, as Chris Harman argued in this journal in 2008. Most notably, it is not always the case that Western imperialist interests have been central to extraction in less developed countries of the Global South. Domestic capital has also been involved in initiating land-grabs in order to enrich themselves. Moreover, richer countries in the Global North such as Canada have also expropriated their “own” resources with just as much vigour as they have abroad.
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James Petras and Henry Veltmeyer have returned to the theme of imperialism in assessing extractivism and echo some of Harvey’s “dispossession” thesis to understand developments in South America. They argue that although neoliberalism created the political and economic space for renewed extractivism, a new post-neoliberalism has emerged out of it. This is characterised by alliances between Western interests and sections of the local ruling class that are based in rural areas and seek to profit from domestic land-grabbing and resource extraction. This occurs at the expense of more urban industrial areas and manufacturing activity, and the organised working class is subordinated during this turn to extractivism. Jobs decline, trade union bargaining power weakens and wage growth is suppressed.27
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Except, the technology to mine the lithium safely and efficiently has not been proven, and some residents worry their communities, already suffering environmental destruction and institutional neglect, could become a sacrifice zone for the dirty part of green energy.
The three companies vying to massively expand lithium mining at the Salton Sea claim they will use a new process called direct lithium extraction (DLE), by which lithium is drawn from underground brine using filters, beads, solvents or sorbents. Proponents of DLE say it saves time and money and is less environmentally damaging than evaporation brine mining. Ten years ago, Simbol Materials built the first demonstration plant at the site, but it folded after a failed acquisition by Tesla. More recently, a company called Lilac Solutions—aided by millions of dollars from Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg and Bill Gates — tried its hand at DLE in the Salton Sea. This August, the company deemed the hot, toxic brine too difficult to handle for both equipment and workers, calling the region a “graveyard for lithium extraction.”
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The U.S. government considers lithium to be one of 35 critical minerals vital to the nation’s security and economic prosperity. Global lithium demand is expected to grow substantially over the next decade, driven largely by increasing demand for lithium-ion batteries in electric vehicles and stationary energy storage for the electricity sector. These technologies are key to California’s clean energy and transportation goals as the state works to phase out gasoline-powered vehicles and fossil fuel-based electricity.
To support the state’s emerging lithium industry and ensure community benefits, Governor Newsom signed Assembly Bill 208 in June 2022, which provides $5 million to Imperial County for environmental review and community engagement, and creates the Lithium Extraction Tax Law. The new law will help promote a robust California-based industry that considers the needs of Imperial Valley communities where the lithium extraction occurs, while recognizing the significant benefit of having a domestic supply of lithium.
www.sfexaminer.com/...
The Salton Sea exists because of industrial meddling with the watershed in the past. More than 100 years ago, the Imperial Valley Press, declared the region “the most fertile body of arid land on the continent,” and new settlers began parceling off acres for farming and creating a system of irrigation to bring their vision to life. The lake was created by accident in 1905 when floods broke a head gate on this irrigation canal and diverted part of the Colorado River into the basin. Later, Frank Sinatra vacationed there. Before and after that, the Salton Sea served as a military test zone. Over time, the flooded valley became increasingly salty, hot and besieged with agricultural run-off and algae blooms, which killed off fish and migratory birds. Evaporation continues to concentrate this toxic cocktail and stands to steal three-quarters of the sea’s current volume by 2030, intensifying the wind-blown air pollution.
Now, the Salton Sea is thought to hold one of the largest reserves of lithium in the world. If the mineral can be extracted, this region, 120 miles east of San Diego, could supply more than a third of the world’s current demand. Three companies — Berkshire Hathaway Renewables, Controlled Thermal Resources and EnergySource — are racing for the chance to mine the increasingly valuable material from the sea’s brine.
The demand for lithium is being driven in part by the Inflation Reduction Act, which aims to create a domestic battery supply chain. The Biden administration set a goal to make half of all new vehicles zero-emissions by 2030 and has invoked the Defense Production Act to secure U.S. production of the needed minerals, including lithium.
“We need to end our long-term reliance on China and other countries for inputs that will power the future,” President Joe Biden said at a March press conference. The Inflation Reduction Act subsidizes the goal with a $7,500 tax credit for electric vehicle buyers, but Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) made sure these credits can only be applied if the vehicle batteries use minerals from the United States (or a country with a U.S. free trade agreement).
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Robert De Niro is set to star in and executive produce “Mr. Natural,” a crime drama series in the works at Entertainment One, Variety has learned.
The project follows Louis “Mr. Natural” Baron (De Niro), who, fresh off a 30-year stint in federal prison, hits Palm Springs driven by a dream to reunite with his stolen family and a dangerous scheme to grab a taste of the Salton Sea’s lithium billions, per the logline for the potential series. There will be blood in the sand and bones in the desert. Palm Springs will never be the same.
The word artificial hides the fact that behind artificial intelligence there is labor and mineral extraction (Karl Marx’s Commodity fetishism).It is present naturally (minerals) and has life and conscience (people that label data, train algorithms or extract those minerals).