Quote:
Originally Posted by FCX5
I suppose as long as they don't end up in the ocean it's an improvement. As long as we are improving, it's good. As they say, Rome wasn't built in a day…
Any reduction in pollution is good…it's a journey, as they say.
Given we are several months into this regulation there doesn't seem to be much of an issue.
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True, a little progress is still progress. I just find it kind of ridiculous how our engineers and experts can figure out how to make these things to get clean energy, but they didn't think about, or didn't care enough about how to dispose of them once their lifespan is over.
I feel like we have too much short term solution and not enough long term consideration. We are essentially creating band aid fixes to please the masses and their "I want it now" mentality. Take electric cars for example, yeah, EV are a great to cut fossil fuels and emissions, but what a lot of people don't realize is at our current rate of demand and what the world gov'ts are pushing to achieve for EV sales in the near future, we will deplete the Earths lithium reserves in under 30 years. I went down a rabbit hole not long ago, I don't remember the details exactly but I read that it was being pushed to have something like 80% of new vehicle sales worldwide be EV by 2035, something like that, so I sat down and figured out the math and it's actually under 15 years before we deplete lithium reserves if we do actually meet those demands, but I think 30 years is more realistic as engineering and manufacturing will advance and require less lithium per vehicle over time. Regardless, we don't have an endless supply of lithium, and with more and more devices becoming wireless and requiring battery power, we use more and more lithium every year. We more than doubled our lithium demand between 2016 and 2020, and thats without a massive increase in EV production like we will potentially see over the next 5-10 years. Hell, 2021 already saw an 80% increase in EV sales globally. Additionally, we don't have the means to recycle batteries in a clean, cost effective and efficient way that doesn't require massive amounts of heat and power, so what are we going to do once we have millions of vehicle batteries needing replacing every year? It's a great "right now" fix, but what about long term?
And yes I know, this is coming from someone who drives a smelly, dirty, evil diesel, but I'm not against EV. I've been watching and waiting, and I'll get one once they can meet my demands of a vehicle, they just aren't quite there yet.