61–70 of 165 posts
Australia is like the Saudi Arabia of mining. Such a big continent with very few people. Politically stable and smart enough to exploit itself and keep most of the profits. The lucky country indeed.
Great book. Written in the 60s but it still holds today.
The flipside of electrification of vehicles is all the extra metal they need to mine, which is highly environmentally destructive. We don't even have the metal supplies to fully electrify car production, not even close, although I see South America is going to ramp up production substantially soon.
Lung cancer rates are higher near major roads due to air pollution from cars. Fossil fuel cars basically means every highway is a superfund site. We just don't talk about it. Given the choice between toxic waste at a mine and toxic waste in millions of homes, I'll take the mine.
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But it isn't lost or scattered into the atmosphere. It's kept well contained in a nice container which can be moved around easily with a forklift. The metals can be reprocessed and turned back into more batteries. Even first generation Leaf batteries are still being sold for reasonable sums of money so we haven't even reached the stage were we are recycling them in ernest yet.
The recycling processes and costs are astronomical and environmentally damaging. https://www.solarreviews.com/blog/are-lithium-ion-batteries-... As lithium batteries degrade they become more unstable and fire prone. I'm sure you're familiar with what happens to your laptop battery as it ages - shorter and shorter life, swelling etc.
And of course, laptop batteries get worked -much- harder and treated to much harsher environments than any EV battery.
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Lithium is non-renewable (we have a finite supply of it), but it's also not a consumable so this is rather less of an issue. Lithium in batteries is more comparable to steel in car bodies than fossil fuels.
Cars used to be made of steel and were very recyclable. More recently they are mostly made of plastics and alloys that are not easily recyclable. Lithium is extremely hard to recycle.
50/50, actually.
The flipside of electrification of vehicles is all the extra metal they need to mine, which is highly environmentally destructive. We don't even have the metal supplies to fully electrify car production, not even close, although I see South America is going to ramp up production substantially soon.
Lung cancer rates are higher near major roads due to air pollution from cars. Fossil fuel cars basically means every highway is a superfund site. We just don't talk about it. Given the choice between toxic waste at a mine and toxic waste in millions of homes, I'll take the mine.
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> It looks like insufficient bonds and bankruptcy just shifted cost burdens for cleanup to government. That's the goal of capitalism, privitise the profits, socialise the losses.
No it isn’t. Where does such a statement even come from? That’s like saying the goal of socialism is to starve everyone.
Can't you think of time and again examples of this? For instance, all fossil fuel using companies are participating in this exercise in real-time today; they certainly are not paying anything for the massive pollution damage they are creating. Corporate fraud never leads to meaningful punishment of the executives and they often make a profit even after "punishment".
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Do you have a reliable source for the lack of supply? Ideally with a detailed breakdown for each potentially problematic material. I keep seeing claims that go both way on that matter. But none were backed by serious research.
I came across this before: - The Mining of Minerals and the Limits to Growth ( https://tupa.gtk.fi/raportti/arkisto/16_2021.pdf )
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Chile is already being ruined. Pay close attention to the lithium triangle as it expands and the state the planet is left in after being mined https://www.euronews.com/green/2022/02/01/south-america-s-li... Why is lithium extraction bad for the environment? Any type of resource extraction is harmful to the planet. This is because removing these raw materials can result in soil degradation, water shortages, biodiversi…
> Why is lithium extraction bad for the environment? Any type of resource extraction is harmful to the planet. This is because removing these raw materials can result in soil degradation, water shortages, biodiversity loss, damage to ecosystem functions and an increase in global warming. Are you trying to argue that using fossil fuels is better for the environment? It’s not clear if you’re using this opportunity to c…
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Steel and aluminum prices didn't rise 12x in the last 2 years [1]. It doesn't matter how much that lithium weighs on a scale. It matters how much it weighs against your wallet. 1. https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/lithium
I thought we are talking about the sizes of holes in the ground, not the cost.
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If you think 10kg of lithium in a Tesla is a lot of extraction, you're never going to believe how much steel and aluminum is in a car.
Yes that's why we need to move to small, efficient, reliable cars and public transport.
In the face of severe climate and weather events, I can hear the buyer still thinking "yes, but the larger model is safer in a storm or fire..."