Bob Neal

The French philosopher Voltaire told us in 1770 to be willing to settle for the good rather than insist on the perfect. “Perfect is the enemy of good.”

He actually said, “Best is the enemy of the good,” but “best” has come down to us as “perfect.”

We all see “perfect” differently, of course. Folks concerned with climate change see the perfect in eliminating fossil fuels in the making of electricity. To other environmentalists, though, the perfect is banning development. The good would most likely be found in reducing the use of fossil fuels in ways that minimize or even eliminate the downsides of development.

Let’s track the clash of perfect and good west to east, from California, so often a trendsetter nowadays, to Maine, so often a trend trailer.

California set 2045 to be carbon-neutral in making electricity. The plan is in big trouble.

Ezra Klein wrote on Sunday in The New York Times that more than 100 environmental groups have united to block Gov. Gavin Newsom’s package of reforms intended to make infrastructure building easier. Klein wrote that the environmental movement is caught in the “dog-that-caught-the-car confusion.”

Now that state and federal governments are moving toward clean energy — that’s the car that the dog caught — they don’t know what to make of it. So, they oppose it.

And California may miss out because the feds are distributing billions of infrastructure dollars on a first-come basis and not to projects tied up in court.

Move east to Nevada where, as you may have read on Wednesday in the Sun Journal, some indigenous people want to block a $2.2 billion lithium mine. (See below for Maine’s lithium mining saga.) Lithium is used in batteries needed to store “clean” energy.

Leaders of the protesters’ tribe, the Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone, back the mine and have signed an agreement that the mine company hire and train tribe members to operate the mine. The case is tied up in court, delaying the agreement, not to mention the mining of lithium.

Next stop, Colorado, which is short 127,000 houses for its growing population. Metro Denver accounts for more than 55% of the shortage. Yet, Colorado can’t build more houses because, as Jerusalem Demsas wrote in the Atlantic, “Local government has too much power.” He means that the patchwork of authority over land use (cities, suburbs and water districts with irregular boundaries, etc.) makes it much easier to stop than to start projects.

Colorado’s governor, Jared Polis, a Democrat, proposed moving some of that jurisdiction to the state level, as has happened in a few other states, including Massachusetts. The bill died in the state Senate, even though it is controlled by Democrats. And even though 60% of Coloradans in a recent poll favor eliminating local restrictions to allow affordable, multifamily housing.

As John Podesta, a senior adviser to President Biden on clean energy, put it last month, “We got so good at stopping projects that we forgot how to build things in America.”

Now we come to Maine and our lithium potential.

Recall the disclosure late in 2021 that a $1.5-billion lithium deposit had been found in Newry, known best for the Sunday River Resort. The lithium is encased in spodumene, which means tons of waste as the spodumene is broken open to extract the lithium.

As reported in The Maine Monitor, “Maine’s 2017 mining law prohibits mining for ‘metallic minerals’ in open pits larger than three acres.” And, “numerous experts have said that open-pit mining (as opposed to an underground shaft) is the only logical way to remove the rocks, which, they also point out, do not pose the same environmental risks as other types of metal deposits.”

The 2017 laws effectively ban mining in Maine. But a different set of laws applies to quarries, and we’ve been pulling gravel and other minerals out of quarries for 200 years or more.

Bills in the Legislature could make it easier to get at the lithium. We could reclassify lithium “mineral” rather than “metallic mineral.” Or let quarry rules cover an open pit full of spodumene.

Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Melanie Loyzim seems to be on board. She told a hearing that the law is too narrow. “We just hadn’t been thinking big picture enough.”

You might not be shocked to read that the Sierra Club is not on board. David von Seggern wrote in March on the Sierra Club website, “We wish to continue the protections offered by the 2017 legislation without opening new permitting pathways. New permitting pathways might allow levels of pollution which were intended to be prevented in the earlier legislation.”

Not a ringing endorsement. And no attempt to square the need to move away from fossil fuels with the need to mine as cleanly as possible.

Still, the move to make lithium available from Newry may be a sign that Maine wants to set a trend. A trend of finding the good when the perfect is, as always, unattainable.

As a human being, Bob Neal is far from perfect. And he doesn’t hold much credence for those who believe themselves or their projects to be perfect. Let’s just make it as good as we can. Neal can be reached at bobneal@myfairpoint.net.