The creators of the endless flood of anti-EV misinformation often claim to be great environmentalists — “Don’t get me wrong…” is a common beginning to their disingenuous articles and posts. In an ironic sense, there may be some truth to this, because they’re certainly believers in recycling. These anti-EV and anti-renewable energy rants rely on a standard repertoire of myths, most of which have been recirculated since modern EVs began to appear a decade ago — and most have been thoroughly debunked and/or made irrelevant by technological and business developments.
When it comes to battery raw materials, some of the claims of the anti-EV brigade are nonsense (lithium isn’t a fuel, and it isn’t going to become “the new oil”), but some are built around grains of truth. Extracting minerals from the earth always has impacts on local environments and communities. The big bête noire of batteries is cobalt, much of which comes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a war-torn land in which child labour is common.
The linked article expands a bit on what is being done around the issues, with links to what those steps are. Now if only the fossil fuel industry were not as considerate themselves around their extraction of raw materials, transporting, refining, fracking, etc. I see the day coming when, like the cigarette companies were finally unmasked in court, the same day will come for oil executives.
#environment #bigoil #myths #EV #rawmaerials