Quote:
Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist
I'll start by saying I think Canada should sell it's oil as long as people want oil. Unilateral supply destruction in a global commodity doesn't decrease consumption, it just makes it more expensive. I also strongly believe Alberta has future gold mine with oil sands for producing what will be heavily sought after carbon products that are most easily made with bitumen
Having said that, I always see people suggest mining for minerals for batteries as somehow equal to or worse than oil and gas from an environmental and ecological perspective. It's simply not. You also can't recycle O&G or coal. Vehicle batteries are very recyclable and there's already way more recycling capacity than batteries available. Sustainable mineral mining and recycling is orders of magnitude (perhaps 100's of times) less impactful than today's O&G exploration and extraction with regards to land use and water consumption.
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also add in the human rights perspective, too.
Isn't most of the worlds colbalt in the Republic of Congo, and China has 80% of graphite?
besides, I thought reports from the ICCT found EV manufacturing requires more energy and produces more emissions than manufacturing a conventional car, because of the metal extraction processes required for batteries.
don't forget the smelting process of recycling lithium-ion and nickel-metal hydride batteries itself recovers only between 40 and 50 per cent of battery materials and itself produces greenhouse gases.
I could probably google for a while to educate myself, but I have a feeling you're overstating how little of an impact EV production has, especially the batteries.