CNN’s Weir: You’ll Have to Put Clean Energy in Spots it Will ‘Ruin’ Things, Where Environmentalists Don’t Want You to

On Tuesday’s broadcast of “CNN News Central,” CNN Chief Climate Correspondent Bill Weir stated that adopting clean energy will require “putting it in places that a lot of environmentalists or native tribes would not like to see the landscape marred in any way. We’re beyond the point of not being able to ruin anything.” And noted that getting the materials for electric cars will require mining for lithium and copper that many Native American tribes oppose.

Weir said President Biden’s creation of a new monument near the Grand Canyon “is a long promise to indigenous tribes, environmental groups that have wanted to sort of permanently protect the rim of the Grand Canyon from uranium mining. President Obama put a 20-year ban on that that was going to expire in the next decade, and Biden’s just essentially making that permanent.”

Weir continued, “But it’s interesting, there are other tribes that are fighting with this administration over similar protections. There’s a lithium [mine] in Thacker Pass, the northern part of Nevada that is creating great tension there. There’s a copper mine in Arizona that some tribes are fighting back against as well. And it speaks to sort of the new energy age that we’re going into. Electric cars need batteries. Batteries need lithium and copper. And so, does it matter to a tribe that has been burned over the generations by settlers breaking promises or taking their land, when you say, no, this is for clean energy? It’s a challenge.”

He added, “That’s the tension. We need all this energy, we need clean energy, which means putting it in places that a lot of environmentalists or native tribes would not like to see the landscape marred in any way. We’re beyond the point of not being able to ruin anything. It’s tough choice time, really.”

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