Summary
President Volodymyr Zelensky warned on March 28 that Ukraine will reject a proposed U.S. minerals deal if it endangers the country’s EU accession.
A new draft, reportedly granting the U.S. extensive control over Ukrainian natural resources, raised concerns over economic sovereignty.
Zelensky said lawyers will review the agreement, emphasizing it must not conflict with Ukraine’s constitutional EU alignment.
The initial deal would create a joint fund reinvesting extraction proceeds into Ukraine. The White House views it as a way to recoup aid, but Kyiv remains cautious after a prior dispute with Trump.
Don’t sign a deal with the US at all.
The US cannot be trusted.
Absolutely not. Assume they’re colluding with Russia.
Ok, but what if we leave the minerals in the ground and preserve the world’s most fertile and productive agricultural land instead of poisoning it with mining runoff?
https://hir.harvard.edu/not-so-green-technology-the-complicated-legacy-of-rare-earth-mining/
https://earth.org/rare-earth-mining-has-devastated-chinas-environment/
https://climatecosmos.com/climate-science/the-impact-of-rare-earth-mining-on-the-environment/
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1557/s43577-022-00286-6
Chernobyl was bad enough… It’s like they want humanity to starve.
But the minerals will make the rich richer, so of course, the minerals MUST be mined! It’s capitalism 101
We require more minerals for the expansion of the creep!
It’s like they want humanity to starve.
Quite a few members of the Trump Administration, including his Secretary of Health and Human Services, are avowed eugenicists.
Doesn’t really matter. Ukraine does not have significant rare earth deposits in the first place. The whole thing is a farce.
Iirc the dirty secret of rare earth metals is that every country has them in at least some capacity even if there’s variability in how easy to access those deposits are. The dirty part is that the countries that produce them less so have a particular abundance and more so have a lack of environmental regulations.
Around here they build shopping malls over the most fertile land we have access to instead of using it to grow food for the millions of people living right next to it…
Ontario. Open for businesses.
Quebec, south shore of the St Lawrence, across the bridge from Montreal!
I was with you until you mixed nuclear into the post. Chernobyl was a series of human errors and bad decisions. We need nuclear to fix our energy issues and slapping the name onto a separate issue is dishonest and makes me doubt your intentions.
They never claimed that nuclear is bad, they claimed that the Chernobyl disaster has already negatively impacted the land enough, mining would only make it worse
Thank you.
Who is “we”?
e.g. Germany already produces 60% of its power reneweable. The plan is 100% by 2030-2035. And the prices for reneweables are already far below the ones for nuclear.
So why throw 10 billion euro into building a nuclear power plant that delivers 1 Gigawatt when you build reneweables for 1 billion that delivers 10 Gigawatt?
Nope, we don’t. This talking point is about a decade out of date. The solutions are all sitting right there without building any new nuclear.
https://www.amazon.com/No-Miracles-Needed-Technology-Climate/dp/1009249541
The argument behind this book revolves around cheap, durable, and at-cost managed utilities with the capacity to shepherd renewable energy in a manner that replicates the need for base load.
The problem with this as a solution comes down to an unforgiving contradiction - this solution does not create high rates of profit. Without high-profit public works, you don’t get buy-in from the financial sector. And without financial sector buy-in, you don’t get business administrators willing to engage the private sector in construction, development, and maintenance of these systems.
The book doesn’t mint enough new billionaires, so it won’t be accepted as a solution in a western free market system. It is, incidentally, why nuclear energy is also unpopular in the US. Compared to gas, oil, and coal, the margins on nuclear electricity are too damned low. Green energy only works because it is so intermittent and temporal, allowing energy brokers to trade on the ups and downs of supply as they fall out of sync with demand.
If you make the system efficient, you lose all the opportunities for arbitrage that incentivize private actors to invest and extract wealth.
Claiming “we need nuclear” makes me doubt your competence. And I say that as someone who prefers fission plants over burning fossil fuels.
A deal with the USA means nothing, but that is as true today as it was in 2014 and 2022.
Why the fuck would you even consider signing anything to that fat orange shit? Every single one of his administration just made a mockery of you last month
Why the fuck would you even consider signing anything to that fat orange shit?
Ask Chuck Schumer. He insists he’s got his reasons.
Because, unlike Trump, he wants his constituents to stop dying.
And unlike Trump, isn’t a waste of oxygen on this planet.
But I’d rather pick total annihilation than bowing to a dictator. So hope the EU deal isn’t interrupted by the orange turds and their stink.
We’ve reached the point where signing a deal with the US threatens EU membership 😞
He shouldn’t sign it at all because it’s fucking stupid.
Capitalists crave that mineral
