• Nuke_the_whales@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Too bad the lithium battery industry is no better. Those places are child labor slave mines and the environmental damage is astronomical…

    • Atrichum@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      You’re probably thinking of cobalt or perhaps hard rock lithium mines. Most lithium is just pumped out of the ground as brines, just like oil.

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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      2 months ago

      You’re missing the big picture. Firstly because they’re reducing the cobalt requirements in batteries which will massively help. Also long-term lithium and cobalt are metals, they are found all over the place. Oil and coal are products that require life and as far as we know Earth is the only planet in the solar system to have organics like that.

      But we can mine asteroids for materials to build batteries. Long before that we’ll have automation to mine the materials on Earth does not requiring human labor. Long-Term this is an improvement it isn’t a zero-sum gain at all like you’re making out

      • bastion@feddit.nl
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        2 months ago

        I mean, not so very long-term (like, now) there’s also sodium-ion prussian blue batteries. That’s some damned good tech right there, and it’s at the beginning of its development arc - there’s a lot of room for improvement, and it’s already good.

    • VirtualOdour@sh.itjust.works
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      2 months ago

      You really sound desperate to reject any possibility that hard work and human ingenuity can solve problems. I assume it’s because you’re scared of feeling you have to actually take life seriously and consider the implications of each choice you make.

      • Nuke_the_whales@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        I reject the possibility that exploration of workers isn’t going to be a part of this “human ingenuity”. Enjoy your electric cars all you like, but don’t pretend nobody was exploited in the making of it.