[PaulDavisThe1st]

> everyone has an electric vehicle with a 65kWh battery sitting in their garage.

That's a solution I hope that neither I nor my children live to see. It's a solution I hope never happens unless a new battery technology arrives that for a start eliminates our need to once again fuck over some very poor countries in order to get our hands on rare resources. Lithium battery tech is quite miraculous, but it's also not appropriate as the basis for the entire electrification of human civilization.

Also, lots of people will have neither cars nor garages.

[Anchor]

> unless a new battery technology arrives that for a start eliminates our need to once again fuck over some very poor countries

It is already here. Google LFP batteries.

[adamparsons]

I’m a big fan of LFP don’t get me wrong, but it still requires mining and refining lithium, which indeed does fuck over the environment quite badly

[epistasis]

Compared to, say, steel or aluminum, what is the increased damage? I've read every single documentary news article, read reports from governmental agencies, and I still don't know what's so bad about lithium. Particularly compared to standard extraction of other resources that nobody ever talks about.

Especially oil. Oil and coal and natural gas have horrifying consequences for local environments all the time, and nobody ever talks about that. From fly ash ponds to spills to destroyed drinking water. If there was anything remotely as bad as that, wouldn't any of these articles I have read pointed out the damage? Literally the worst lithium story is political, not environmental, in that indigenous people are not being given enough compensation for their land, or not given enough input.

Cobalt has stories of child labor at artisanal mines, but again that is political, not environmental damage, and the environmental damage is the same as from all the other parts that go into the grid, or a car, and they don't have the horrifying consequences of fossil fuel extraction.

If I'm wrong, and there is something I don't know,I will be forever grateful for a pointer to clear documentation of this environmental damage you speak of. But I have been asking this question for years, and searching for years, and nobody, literally nobody, has pointed me to anything concrete. Just vague assertions at best. Which is not what environmental damage looks like. Environmental damage is specific, horrifying, and all too often swept under the rug as long as its wealthy fossil fuel companies doing it.

[lanstin]

https://nbcpalmsprings.com/2021/04/29/salton-sea-lithium-gol...

I can’t vouch for this of my own knowledge but as lithium is such a light element it is sensible that it would be easy to find and use.

[hutzlibu]

Erm, have you heard of

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-ion_battery

No technical recolution needed, no rare elements needed, no invasions nedded, just plain salt, iron and copper. They are just bigger in size.

And for some reasons not really known so this whole discussion feels a bit off.