this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2024
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A lot. Look into how it's mined.
[Edit: Maybe it's cobalt I was thinking of. But one problem I'm sure about is that lithium demand is predicted to be greater than the supply of lithium batteries continue to grow in popularity.
OTOH it's not harmless either, e.g. https://www.euronews.com/green/2022/02/01/south-america-s-lithium-fields-reveal-the-dark-side-of-our-electric-future]
It's only greater than the supply because the demand for more wasn't there.
There's so much Lithium out there, it's not scarce at all. It just means we gotta put resources into looking for good deposits and then extracting it.
We might run into a brief shortage in the short term while things scale, or we might not. TBD.
If we can find something that works as well and it's as or more environmentally friendly to obtain, then that's great too.
I work in a lithium mine, we make big rocks into little rocks the same as any other. What's the problem? Unless you're against mining in general, hard rock lithium should be fine
Yes do look into it. There are MANY ways to harvest lithium and most are better than what the oil and gas companies does when fracking or drilling on land.
Being better than one of the most destructive industries ever is not a high bar. But the most effective way to harvest lithium remains an open pit mine, which are arguably worse than literally anything else.
Going to argue it isn't as bad as shale / oil sands projects. Also the battery is mostly aluminum, copper and nickel in the anode and cathode, all that has to be mined as well.
The products of the Oil industry are also consumed and can't be recycled, something like 90% of a battery can be recycled and reused.
I thought it was all or almost all of the metals?
There's other non metals that wouldn't necessarily be, but all the lithium is for example?
Not sure what you are even saying?
All of the lithium (metals) is recycled. Some of the other materials can't be or aren't recycled
Making an improvement for something that can be recycled and thus should REDUCE over time is a a MASSIVE improvement over doing nothing and bitching about it.
The less we need of it, the better either way.
It can be recycled.. Unlike the oil and gas used up in ICE cars.
I don't know who told you that being second worst is a flex, but it's not.