In any case digging up fossil fuels is also pretty dirty, and has been known to pollute indigenous people’s drinking water, steal their land, and on occasion pay for private militias and government troops to put down protests.
Obviously electric buses are preferable to electric cars. Public transport is worth investing in.
Also on batteries, iron-air is promising for grid storage, but not likely to be used for vehicles.
In any case digging up fossil fuels is also pretty dirty, and has been known to pollute indigenous people’s drinking water, steal their land, and on occasion pay for private militias and government troops to put down protests.
There isn’t much in industry exempt from that kind of thing, but countries go to war over access to oil. Anything that reduces consumption is good for mankind.
@rm_dash_r_star My point was simply that the danger to the Global South, and people in general, from continued fossil fuel extraction is greater than that from the extraction needed for the transition.
We can reduce the material demands of the transition somewhat by demand reduction etc, but we’re not comparing a new lithium mine taking people’s land to nothing. We’re comparing it to oil wells polluting people’s drinking water *and* killing their crops with droughts and floods *and* rising sea levels destroying AOSIS etc.
By all means try to do it in a cleaner, fairer, more just way. But rare earths, or even cobalt, aren’t a reason to stop the transition, which seemed to be the agenda of the person I’ve now blocked here. We need appropriate, better technology. And we can’t eliminate all road vehicles overnight, though we can reduce them somewhat.
No doubt I’m preaching to the converted now though. 😀
@rm_dash_r_star @notapantsday Unfortunately batteries with nickel are still pretty widely used. However it’s definitely going in the right direction.
https://www.iea.org/reports/global-ev-outlook-2023/trends-in-batteries
In any case digging up fossil fuels is also pretty dirty, and has been known to pollute indigenous people’s drinking water, steal their land, and on occasion pay for private militias and government troops to put down protests.
Obviously electric buses are preferable to electric cars. Public transport is worth investing in.
Also on batteries, iron-air is promising for grid storage, but not likely to be used for vehicles.
There isn’t much in industry exempt from that kind of thing, but countries go to war over access to oil. Anything that reduces consumption is good for mankind.
@rm_dash_r_star My point was simply that the danger to the Global South, and people in general, from continued fossil fuel extraction is greater than that from the extraction needed for the transition.
We can reduce the material demands of the transition somewhat by demand reduction etc, but we’re not comparing a new lithium mine taking people’s land to nothing. We’re comparing it to oil wells polluting people’s drinking water *and* killing their crops with droughts and floods *and* rising sea levels destroying AOSIS etc.
By all means try to do it in a cleaner, fairer, more just way. But rare earths, or even cobalt, aren’t a reason to stop the transition, which seemed to be the agenda of the person I’ve now blocked here. We need appropriate, better technology. And we can’t eliminate all road vehicles overnight, though we can reduce them somewhat.
No doubt I’m preaching to the converted now though. 😀