The Nation has picked up a hit piece that I originally read on DKos. This is the latest in a long campaign of misinformation and court filings designed to stop people from switching away from fossil fuel vehicles to electric vehicles.
First, understand that while a gallon of gas lasts about 20 minutes at highway speeds, 6 pounds of lithium lasts 20 years or more, as lithium car batteries are recyclable. If you charge your electric vehicle with solar, as I often do, then you can drive for hours emitting zero carbon. (I know math is hard, but a little lithium helps save the planet).
Second, the premise is that electric vehicles will require a lot of lithium with mining on public and tribal land. Look at the map above and think about that for a second. Gee, maybe we could give Texas back to Native Americans?
The Salton Sea in California is a polluted and depopulated area, due to a long history of myopic environmental mismanagement. Yet, we could meet our national lithium needs for decades from this one wasteland. (I’ve smelled the dead fish).
If you are really concerned about public and tribal lands, then first you should demand an immediate end to fossil fuel drilling. For each lithium mine on public or tribal lands, we could recover several counties of land with oil and gas wells.
If you are really concerned about pollution, then first you should demand an immediate end to fossil fuels. How stupid do the fossil fuel industries and their corporate flunkies think you are? Don’t be an April Fool.
- Oil drilling can damage aquifers
- Strip mining tar sands or shale removes forests and pollute surface water
- Supertankers spill oil
- Tanker trucks spill oil
- Tanker trains spill oil
- Pipelines spill oil
- Refineries pollute the air
- Storage facilities can spill or catch fire
- Coal mining causes black lung
- Coal mining and transportation pollutes rivers
- Coal burning causes terrible air pollution
- Fracking causes earthquakes, air and water pollution
- Gas flares burn billions of dollars of fuel around the clock around the globe
- Methane leaks from uncapped wells, refineries and damaged pipes
- Every year there are ~175,000 fossil fuel vehicle fires in the US (not electric)
- Leaded gas is still allowed for race cars, boats, farm machinery and aircraft (maybe this explains some of the stupidity)
I understand some people don’t think they can afford an electric car, which start used at around $10,000 or have a $7,500 tax credit new. And I understand that people don’t like billionaires, who include fossil fuel folks like Vladimir Putin and Prince Mohammed bin Salman. But, please, can we make an effort to recognize that the world would be a lot better off with far less fossil fuels and far more electric vehicles? Maybe consider the future of life on earth before passing along some right-wing fossil-fuel funded propaganda? Thanks.