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I mean if you don’t care about African mines and Chinese rivers that factories dump their effluent into, sure. But there is absolutely an environmental cost, ju
by seibelj 6y ago
I mean if you don’t care about African mines and Chinese rivers that factories dump their effluent into, sure. But there is absolutely an environmental cost, just less to the wealthy nations that pay to move the damage elsewhere.
- dagurp 6y agoIf you're talking about cobalt you should know that it's also used to refine oil. Battery makers are moving away from it and Tesla have already invented batteries that use no cobalt at all (see battery day)
- tdrgabi 6y agoI think his point was that the damage moves from "everywhere" to certain places like factories and mines. Than you can add better filters/cleanup to the factories and mines. It's a simpler problem to tackle if you have a few thousands polluting agents than billions of polluting agents everywhere.
- adrianN 6y agoMining problems have the huge benefit that they're relatively localized and get a lot less severe when you choose to stop mining there. Fixing environmental problems from mining also doesn't require global coordination. Global warming on the other hand threatens the whole biome and stopping the release of CO2 doesn't stop global warming once tipping points are reached. You also need global agreement to meaningfully do something about it. (You also have to keep in mind that fuel for ICEs doesn't magically appear. Extracting oil and transporting it isn't particularly good for the local environment either.)