Liberal Forum

"Is it ethical to purchase a lithium battery powered EV?" that entire mountains are eliminated by just one lithium mine.

"Each mine consists of 35-40 797 Caterpillar haul trucks along with hundreds of other large equipment," he writes. "Each 797 uses around half a million gallons of diesel a year. An inventory of just thirty-five trucks alone is using 17.5 million gallons of fuel a year for just one lithium site."

 An EV battery weighs 1,000 pounds, contains 25 pounds of lithium, 60 pounds of nickel, 44 pounds of manganese, 30 pounds of cobalt, 200 pounds of copper and 400 pounds of aluminum, steel and plastic. Inside are 6,000 lithium-ion cells."

"All those toxic components come from mining," he writes. "To manufacture each EV auto battery, you must process 25,000 pounds of brine for the lithium, 30,000 pounds of ore for the cobalt, 5,000 pounds of ore for the nickel, and 25,000 pounds of ore for copper.
All told, you dig up 500,000 pounds of the earth’s crust for just one battery."

 Stein authored "Clean Energy Exploitations: Helping Citizens Understand." 

Stein argues that fossil fuels are vastly cleaner, partly because they are so efficient. Once the mining and environmental degradation are complete, EV's in reality run overwhelmingly on fossil fuels and nuclear power. An EV only stores electricity that is produced elsewhere. And the sources primarily are coal, uranium, natural gas-powered plants and occasionally the wind and the sun.
 "To say an EV is a zero-emission vehicle is not at all valid as 80 percent of the electricity generated to charge the batteries is from coal, natural gas, and nuclear". In effect, 20% of the EVs on the road are powered by coal, 40% by natural gas and 20% by nuclear power.

 Hinderaker adds that the extraordinary volume of mining needed to produce electric vehicles not only is "environmentally disastrous," it also carries "large human costs."

The cobalt that is needed for EV's comes mostly from the Congo, where UNCF estimates 40,000 children are working in cobalt mines. He emphasizes that the solar panels that produce some of the energy stored in EV batteries are mostly produced by slave labor in China. "For what it’s worth, Chinese solar panels are produced with coal-fired power plants."

 Hinderaker concludes:"Green" energy is a catastrophically bad idea. I think many people understand that wind and solar power and electric vehicles are economically ruinous, but when we also take into account environmental degradation and child and slave labor, one can seriously question whether it is immoral to buy an electric car.