Mining nickel from... plants?

Farming for minerals, Canadian climate risks, and tool libraries

Last week, I talked about how powerful our voices can be – and this week, the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication put a number on it. "Americans who hear others talk about global warming at least once a month have higher levels of perceived collective political efficacy than those who hear others talk about global warming less often – 54% versus 39%," they found.

Political efficacy is a common indicator for the health of a civil society. Wikipedia defines it as “citizens’ trust in their ability to change the government and the belief they can understand and influence political affairs.” Although the way we communicate together - through conversations, actions, and more - might look different across different cultures, I don’t think this effect is limited to Americans; we’re all human!

This gives us even more reason to keep talking about climate change—with our friends, family, neighbours, and with our elected officials too. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, politicians usually underestimate how much their constituents care about climate risk and prioritize climate solutions, simply because they don’t hear from them. Now you know what to do about it!

GOOD NEWS

Image from Metalplant

Demand for nickel, an essential metal in manufacturing EV batteries, is forecast to double by 2040. Conventional mining, though, is a carbon-intensive process with many negative impacts. Currently, half the world’s nickel comes from Indonesia, a biodiversity hotspot with incredibly carbon-rich ecosystems.

For each kilogram of nickel mined, it’s estimated between 7 to 10 kg of carbon stock is lost from forests. Mining also threatens local indigenous tribes, and the coal-fired power plants that are springing up to power the smelters also pollute the local air and water, in addition to creating even more carbon emissions.

Now, a start-up in Albania called Metalplant is trying out a new kind of mining: "phytomining," that consists of growing and harvesting nickel-accumulating flowers. Phytomining only works in places where the soil has a high nickel content, and Albania fits that bill. Native plants like Odontarrhena decipiens "take in nickel like a macronutrient,” Aida Bani at the Agricultural University of Tirana in Albania, who is collaborating with Metalplant, told New Scientist.

Metalplant is also aiming to sequester carbon on its farms through "enhanced rock weathering," which involves spreading rock dust on the soil on its farms. This means that, rather than depleting ecosystem carbon stocks, they’ll be adding to them. “We’re able to turn the lowest-grade land in the world into some of the most lucrative land in the world,” said Eric Matzner, Metalplant's CEO. Each hectare could produce between 200 to 400 kilograms of nickel, they estimate.

For reference, the traditional Sorowako mine in Indonesia produces between 335 to 380 kg of nickel per hectare, and one recent study estimates new nickel mines could destroy an additional 500,000 hectares of forest in Indonesia alone. So you can see why this is such good news!

NOT-SO-GOOD NEWS

I often hear from Canadians who argue that, “We’re a northern country, so isn’t climate change a good thing?” and these days, I feel as if climate change is saying, “Oh yeah? Hold my beer…” (Molson’s, of course).

Last year, we experienced an unprecedented, coast-to-coast wildfire season. It was so extreme that the area burned exceeded the entire country of Greece and produced four times the carbon emissions of global aviation. This very week, Jasper National Park is being evacuated due to wildfires, more than a hundred fires are burning across the province of Saskatchewan alone, and wildfire smoke is triggering air quality warnings across much of western Canada and the US, all the way from Calgary down to Denver.

Focusing in on Quebec, scientists found that hot, dry weather due to climate change at least doubled the risk of the 2023 wildfire season. This June, the eastern half of Canada, from Ontario to the Maritimes, experienced a blistering heat wave that Environment and Climate Change Canada scientists have shown was ten times more likely thanks to climate change.

Then, on Tuesday last week, Toronto received a month’s worth of rain in just a few hours-- 100 millimeters or 4 inches. Roads and basements flooded, the Don River overflowed its banks, highways were under water, and a GO Transit train was surrounded by water with 1,400 passengers on board. Even Drake's mansion was inundated with muddy water.

It’s the second time my hometown has faced major flooding in the past 11 years. Toronto last saw widespread flooding back in 2013, when 126 millimeters of rain fell in one day. Since then, the city has worked to become more flood-resistant, but climate change is outpacing its efforts. And this isn’t unique to Toronto; as the Canadian Climate Center points out, “over the last decade, the average cost of weather-related disasters and catastrophic losses each year has risen to the equivalent 5-6% of annual GDP growth.”

This increasing litany of disasters makes it clear: our infrastructure was designed for a planet that no longer exists. As former presidential science advisor John Holdren says, “We have three choices: mitigation, adaptation, and suffering. We’re going to do some of each. The question is what the mix is going to be. The more mitigation we do, the less adaptation will be required and the less suffering there will be.”

WHAT YOU CAN DO

The next time you're in the throes of a home improvement project, don't dash out to a big box store to buy another tool. Instead, consider renting or borrowing equipment from a local tool library! The website LocalTools.org makes it easy to search for tool libraries near you, and share this resource with people you know.

One particularly impressive example is The Tool Library, a nonprofit in Buffalo, NY that was founded 13 years ago. It costs from $30 to join, and last year, the library saved its members some $730,000. The organization also hosts regular "repair cafes" to patch, mend, and fix broken items that might otherwise be tossed out, saving an estimated 7,779 pounds of items from going into landfills.

“We’re part of a broader economic transition away from a system that really hasn’t been serving most people, locally or around the world,” said Darren Cotton, The Tool Library’s founder. “We’re shifting toward models that are more sustainable, more regenerative and that rely more on people helping one another, as opposed to a market delivering services.”