03/26/2022
TYPICAL ELECTRIC VEHICLE BATTERY:
25 pounds of lithium, 60 pounds of nickel, 44 pounds of manganese, 30 pounds cobalt, 200 pounds of copper, and 400 pounds of aluminum, steel, and plastic.
All but the plastic must be mined and the plastic is processed from fossil fuels.
No car is powered by batteries. That's a blatant and purposeful lie. The batteries are just containers for the real fuel which is electricity. It's like saying your car is run by gas cans. No, gas cans are just containers for the real fuel.
Electricity is produced primarily by coal, uranium, natural gas-powered plants, or diesel-fueled generators. So, to say an electric powered vehicle ("EV") is a zero-emission vehicle is a blatant and purposeful lie. Since 40% of the electricity generated in the U.S. is from coal-fired plants, it follows that 40% of every EV is powered by coal. These are coal-burning vehicles, and uranium powered vehicles, etc.
But that doesn't mean that the batteries are neutral to the environment. No, they're also nasty to the environment. Dry-cell species use zinc, manganese, lithium, silver oxide, or zinc and carbon to store electricity chemically. Rechargeable batteries only differ in their internal materials, usually lithium-ion, nickel-metal oxide, and nickel-cadmium. They all contain toxic, heavy metals.
The United States uses three billion batteries a year, and most end up in landfills where their shells break down and they leak their toxic contents. The metals inside eventually ooze out. The crud in your ruined flashlight is toxic, and so is the ooze that will inevitably leak from every battery in a landfill. All batteries, even rechargeable ones when they eventually die, rupture and leak their toxic heavy metals into the environment.
A typical EV battery contains 25 pounds of lithium, 60 pounds of nickel, 44 pounds of manganese, 30 pounds cobalt, 200 pounds of copper, and 400 pounds of aluminum, steel, and plastic. All those components come from mining. For instance, to manufacture an EV auto battery FOR JUST ONE CAR, 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. But since it's done out of sight, we pretend it's not happening.
Sixty-eight percent of the world's cobalt, a significant part of a battery, comes from the Congo. Their mines have no pollution controls. They are environmentally hazardous pits which employ children who die from handling this toxic material. This is also done out of sight, so we pretend it's not happening. Environmentalists refuse to factor in these diseased and dying kids as part of the cost of driving an electric car. Each new EV should come with a photograph of an African child who died making its "clean" batteries.
Only a blind fool would believe that EVs are environmentally clean. The destruction to the environment is right there for all to see, but some people prefer to lie to themselves and to others to make themselves feel good about themselves. It's virtue signaling, but without the virtue. We don't have to accept their lies. EVs are environmentally dirty vehicles which are significantly destructive to the environment. They certainly are not the "green" vehicles they pretend to be.
