6 ms·

While I agree this scenario is representative to what is likely to happen if nobody reacts, I don't agree that it must necessarily happen or that is a reason to

While I agree this scenario is representative to what is likely to happen if nobody reacts, I don't agree that it must necessarily happen or that is a reason to stay on petrol cars. The difference between batteries and petrol is that batteries can be reprocessed. The problem is unless we do something (set up regulation) it is likely the unregulated way in which it is going to happen will cost a huge pollution and suffering. Think in terms of lead and lead-acid batteries specifically. There is a mandated system (at least here in EU) that tries to prevent the components of lead acid batteries to get back into environment. For example, when I want to buy a replacement battery I can't throw the old one in the trash and I am expected to exchange the old one for the new one and pay extra if I want to only buy new one without giving away the old. Is it too hard to think we can do something like that for the huge card batteries which are much less disposable than the lead acid ones?

Clubber 5y ago
>Is it too hard to think we can do something like that for the huge card batteries which are much less disposable than the lead acid ones? Who is we? I don't remember being able to vote for any politicians that are interested in this sort of thing. Hydrogen cell cars are probably the best option for the future. It's very abundant naturally and its byproduct is H2O. We have to figure out how to mass produce it though. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnzuuLpYFVg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnzuuLpYFVg
- lmilcin 5y ago
  > Who is we? We, the People? Isn't that the whole point of democracy?
  - Clubber 5y ago
    Lol. Yes, yes. And cops are the good guys and drug users are evil. I remember all this from elementary school too.
    - lmilcin 5y ago
      Democracy is very slow and inefficient system. It's just that up until now we haven't figured out any better solution. Democracy works on fixing the problems over time. It means usually there is a delay between a problem and a fix. At any point in time you will see a lot of problem, but that doesn't mean that democracy doesn't work. Think about Jira. If every project has a lot of issues in Jira, does it means they are all shit and need to be scrapped? Do you think whining about the number of issues is going to help?
      - yeigfepuih 5y ago
        A hammer is a tool. A democratic process is a tool. It's always weird to me to hear people talk about "democracy" as an abstract moral philosophy or a system of government. It sounds to me like people talking about "hammerism" or something, like the Builder faction from the Thief series. There are many, many faults of democratic methods. But, let it be succinctly said: human beings are easily manipulated on short time scales. Anything left to a decision of the "majority of the people" is easily influenced by propogandists. In a system that is based entirely on the tool of democracy, power is accumulated by those most adept at manipulation. A robust system of government that protects liberty, dignity, and enables people to improve their quality of life, will include democratic processes, which are useful, but will also need to employ a variety of other governmental and moral decision making tools.
        dmwallin 5y ago
        People love to roll out this popular criticism of democracy but there is very little actual evidence to support it. It can be quite a bit more expensive and much more visible when you have to influence a large number of people than to influence a small group of stakeholders. There's a reason why lobbying is such a huge part of american politics. Even more to the point both historical and contemporary evidence indicates that power and influence spread more evenly across a countries citizens is strongly correlated to overall quality of life.
        5y ago
- natmaka 5y ago
  > Hydrogen > We have to figure out how to mass produce it though. Many renewable sources (mainly solar, wind) are only intermittently producing, therefore we need to store energy produced during over-producing periods.
- smileysteve 5y ago
  Hydrogen still has highly corroded less than recyclable cryo tanks AND either a combustion engine or fuel cell (highly corroded, less than recyclable)
  - Hypx_ 5y ago
    Carbon fiber tanks are much less of a disposal/recycling problem than batteries.
consp 5y ago
For personal use yes, for professional use the "tax" is either absent or doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. Considering I have plenty of "disposed" used UPS batteries laying around I'm pretty sure companies don't care. (This is in the EU)
vladvasiliu 5y ago
I think the issue with this is that politicians have a tendency to think about problems only long after the fact. For example, in the EU, they've banned some plastic single-use food containers, like straws, etc. The other day I was reading an article in a local French paper about how some organization did a study on the replacement products used and found them to be pretty terrible. Both for the environment and for the human body. The kicker was that some of those containers were sold as being "bio-degradable" but it turned out they weren't. Now batteries and similar are a "new" thing, so they probably didn't have enough time to think about this, but selling something as something that it's not, even if we leave aside the whole ecology thing, sounds pretty much like fraud to me. But apparently they're looking into ways of banning these, not taking up the suppliers for fraud.
- antocv 5y ago
  > so they probably didn't have enough time to think about this How can they not have time to do their job? What are they busy with, getting away with bribes?
  - zopa 5y ago
    In the US, members of Congress spend a truly unfathomable amount of time fundraising---as much as six hours a day. There's also just the fact that the issues before Congress are numerous and complicated, and staffing hasn't kept up. In fact research staff were cut significantly back in the 90s. And the real trouble is that once everyone's gotten (understandably!) cynical about the institution, most of the stuff that would help (more staffing, public financing of campaigns) feels like giving more money to crooks. So we go on this way despite everybody knowing the problem and the solutions being not that complicated, or even very expensive in the grand scheme.
- rkul 5y ago
  Can you share source?
  - vladvasiliu 5y ago
ppf 5y ago
The existing system with lead-acid batteries is based on the fact that they are easy to recycle, and the lead has significant value.
- lmilcin 5y ago
  If that was the case, the regulation would not be needed. But before regulation a lot of car batteries would end up in land fill and are now leeching into water veins.
  - ppf 5y ago
    I'm not sure of the numbers on that, but even if so, it's much easier to mandate the recycling of a product that has net value at the end of its life. Currently, lithium batteries do not. If you are waiting on a rising cost in raw materials to make it viable, then battery packs will become correspondingly even more expensive. Edit: It might also be an effect, that recycling mandates had to be introduced, becase lead-handling mandates had dissuaded anyone from recycling them. Not that I'm aruging against lead-handling mandates, it's a pretty nasty material.
  - anfilt 5y ago
    Even before a lot regulations around car batteries had a pretty high recycling rate. It's a lot metal to just throw away. However, even being the minority of occurrences one battery is a lot lead (a heavy metal) so it does not take very much to start being a concern.

Clubber 5y ago

>Is it too hard to think we can do something like that for the huge card batteries which are much less disposable than the lead acid ones? Who is we? I don't remember being able to vote for any politicians that are interested in this sort of thing. Hydrogen cell cars are probably the best option for the future. It's very abundant naturally and its byproduct is H2O. We have to figure out how to mass produce it though. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnzuuLpYFVg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnzuuLpYFVg

lmilcin 5y ago
> Who is we? We, the People? Isn't that the whole point of democracy?
- Clubber 5y ago
  Lol. Yes, yes. And cops are the good guys and drug users are evil. I remember all this from elementary school too.
  - lmilcin 5y ago
    Democracy is very slow and inefficient system. It's just that up until now we haven't figured out any better solution. Democracy works on fixing the problems over time. It means usually there is a delay between a problem and a fix. At any point in time you will see a lot of problem, but that doesn't mean that democracy doesn't work. Think about Jira. If every project has a lot of issues in Jira, does it means they are all shit and need to be scrapped? Do you think whining about the number of issues is going to help?
    - yeigfepuih 5y ago
      A hammer is a tool. A democratic process is a tool. It's always weird to me to hear people talk about "democracy" as an abstract moral philosophy or a system of government. It sounds to me like people talking about "hammerism" or something, like the Builder faction from the Thief series. There are many, many faults of democratic methods. But, let it be succinctly said: human beings are easily manipulated on short time scales. Anything left to a decision of the "majority of the people" is easily influenced by propogandists. In a system that is based entirely on the tool of democracy, power is accumulated by those most adept at manipulation. A robust system of government that protects liberty, dignity, and enables people to improve their quality of life, will include democratic processes, which are useful, but will also need to employ a variety of other governmental and moral decision making tools.
      - dmwallin 5y ago
        People love to roll out this popular criticism of democracy but there is very little actual evidence to support it. It can be quite a bit more expensive and much more visible when you have to influence a large number of people than to influence a small group of stakeholders. There's a reason why lobbying is such a huge part of american politics. Even more to the point both historical and contemporary evidence indicates that power and influence spread more evenly across a countries citizens is strongly correlated to overall quality of life.
        5y ago
natmaka 5y ago
> Hydrogen > We have to figure out how to mass produce it though. Many renewable sources (mainly solar, wind) are only intermittently producing, therefore we need to store energy produced during over-producing periods.
smileysteve 5y ago
Hydrogen still has highly corroded less than recyclable cryo tanks AND either a combustion engine or fuel cell (highly corroded, less than recyclable)
- Hypx_ 5y ago
  Carbon fiber tanks are much less of a disposal/recycling problem than batteries.

consp 5y ago

For personal use yes, for professional use the "tax" is either absent or doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. Considering I have plenty of "disposed" used UPS batteries laying around I'm pretty sure companies don't care. (This is in the EU)

vladvasiliu 5y ago

I think the issue with this is that politicians have a tendency to think about problems only long after the fact. For example, in the EU, they've banned some plastic single-use food containers, like straws, etc. The other day I was reading an article in a local French paper about how some organization did a study on the replacement products used and found them to be pretty terrible. Both for the environment and for the human body. The kicker was that some of those containers were sold as being "bio-degradable" but it turned out they weren't. Now batteries and similar are a "new" thing, so they probably didn't have enough time to think about this, but selling something as something that it's not, even if we leave aside the whole ecology thing, sounds pretty much like fraud to me. But apparently they're looking into ways of banning these, not taking up the suppliers for fraud.

antocv 5y ago
> so they probably didn't have enough time to think about this How can they not have time to do their job? What are they busy with, getting away with bribes?
- zopa 5y ago
  In the US, members of Congress spend a truly unfathomable amount of time fundraising---as much as six hours a day. There's also just the fact that the issues before Congress are numerous and complicated, and staffing hasn't kept up. In fact research staff were cut significantly back in the 90s. And the real trouble is that once everyone's gotten (understandably!) cynical about the institution, most of the stuff that would help (more staffing, public financing of campaigns) feels like giving more money to crooks. So we go on this way despite everybody knowing the problem and the solutions being not that complicated, or even very expensive in the grand scheme.
rkul 5y ago
Can you share source?
- vladvasiliu 5y ago

ppf 5y ago

The existing system with lead-acid batteries is based on the fact that they are easy to recycle, and the lead has significant value.

lmilcin 5y ago
If that was the case, the regulation would not be needed. But before regulation a lot of car batteries would end up in land fill and are now leeching into water veins.
- ppf 5y ago
  I'm not sure of the numbers on that, but even if so, it's much easier to mandate the recycling of a product that has net value at the end of its life. Currently, lithium batteries do not. If you are waiting on a rising cost in raw materials to make it viable, then battery packs will become correspondingly even more expensive. Edit: It might also be an effect, that recycling mandates had to be introduced, becase lead-handling mandates had dissuaded anyone from recycling them. Not that I'm aruging against lead-handling mandates, it's a pretty nasty material.
- anfilt 5y ago
  Even before a lot regulations around car batteries had a pretty high recycling rate. It's a lot metal to just throw away. However, even being the minority of occurrences one battery is a lot lead (a heavy metal) so it does not take very much to start being a concern.