Shifting consumption is not a means of solving our root disease. There is nothing green about the mining or refining of lithium; nor the production of a battery from the resulting metal. There is nothing green about any of the process so far proffered to retrieve lithium from a spent battery. It will take 400 pounds of lithium ion battery to replace an ICE. Then it will take the construction of the equivalent of 350 nuclear power plants to plug them all in should you replace 100% of passenger vehicles. Then you need to replace the 18 wheelers trucking everything from food to useless plastic trinkets in the dollar stores. Now you are talking a couple of tons of batteries. How is that sustainable?
Then there is the looming groundwater contamination from all that mining, refining, manufacture, and reclaim. Bhopal anyone?
The root disease is consumption. Our entitlement to personal transportation is not a virtue. It certainly makes the economy increase to the benefit of a few. However, it is plain to see that unfettered economics that are based on constant growth have created a climate in which no solution that conforms to the graph can possibly be sustainable.
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Shifting consumption is not a means of solving our root disease. There is nothing green about the mining or refining of lithium; nor the production of a battery from the resulting metal. There is nothing green about any of the process so far proffered to retrieve lithium from a spent battery. It will take 400 pounds of lithium ion battery to replace an ICE. Then it will take the construction of the equivalent of 350 nuclear power plants to plug them all in should you replace 100% of passenger vehicles. Then you need to replace the 18 wheelers trucking everything from food to useless plastic trinkets in the dollar stores. Now you are talking a couple of tons of batteries. How is that sustainable?
Then there is the looming groundwater contamination from all that mining, refining, manufacture, and reclaim. Bhopal anyone?
The root disease is consumption. Our entitlement to personal transportation is not a virtue. It certainly makes the economy increase to the benefit of a few. However, it is plain to see that unfettered economics that are based on constant growth have created a climate in which no solution that conforms to the graph can possibly be sustainable.
Human has much to consider it wishes not to....
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