8 ms·

US transition to electric cars threatens environmental havoc

26 points by samizdis 4y ago

Retric 4y ago
Let’s complain about about water damage from firefighting when the other option is to let it burn. Lithium mining causes extremely localized harm, ICE engines cause worldwide damage.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  If you'd read the article you'd see they're arguing for decreasing car dependence whilst simultaneoisly making all new cars BEV. How you can manage to construe that as a bad thing is baffling. To use your analogy it's like attacking someone who wants to stop the arsonist while the firefighters do their job instead of building a new water reservoir.
  - Retric 4y ago
    There are many many reasons to reduce our dependence on cars such as reducing particle emissions from tire and break wear, lithium mining is again hardly worth discussing. Lithium mining is ~4 orders of magnitude less harmful than ICE engines. Perhaps someone could have improved the situation by rearranging deck chars on the titanic into a more aesthetic pattern, but it’s not the kind of thing that deserved their attention.
    - defrost 4y ago
      Consuming less is still by far the best approach, better city layouts and greater public transport, etc. As for the Lithium production figures: > Let us consider, for example, electric cars. To give an idea of this effect, producing a battery weighing 1,100 pounds emits over 70% more carbon dioxide than producing a conventional car in Germany, according to research by the automotive consultancy Berylls Strategy Advisors. https://phys.org/news/2023-01-paradox-lithium-net-zero-emissions.html https://phys.org/news/2023-01-paradox-lithium-net-zero-emiss... which to be sure isn't a full life cycle comparison .. but let's be very clear, the full G20 country demand for an electric future creates an unreasonably high demand on copper and rare earth mining and directly impacts all manner of marhinalised people - the US has a $64 billion copper reserve in Arizona on sites considered sacred by Native American tribes. https://resolutioncopper.com/ https://resolutioncopper.com/
      - Retric 4y ago
        > better city layouts and greater public transport Those are useful for other things, if you want smaller batteries add in road charging. Just don’t wait for perfection when you can dramatically improve things today. > 70% more carbon dioxide than producing a conventional car in Germany Only today. Manufacturing currently produces carbon dioxide due to things like a fossil fueled electric grid not as an inherent part of the process. Fixing the grid is also required.
        Schroedingersat 4y ago
        There's no need to 'wait for perfection' to stop legislating bigger cars and higher car modeshare. We can push for sane streets and phase out ICEs at the same time.
        Retric 4y ago
        Updating cities alone is not enough to remove the need for long range batteries. It’s also a really slow and expensive process.
        Schroedingersat 4y ago
        You're doing that thing where you pretend one person needing something somewhere invalidates improving anything for anyone anywhere else. The reality is the only thing stopping most trips from being made in a light vehicle is the unchecked externalities from the large ones. And only one long range vehicle is 'needed' per household
        Retric 4y ago
        Most households don’t always take long trips to the same places especially when you’re talking long trips in terms of small EV batteries. I am all for improving cities, but just as a baseline not everyone lives in cities. Any long term plan needs to consider everyone not just people who live in dense enough areas public transportation is a clear win. Sure, ban cars in the center of cities, just don’t expect that to change how large most people want their car’s battery to be. This article and discussion is doing the thing where you exaggerate a small problem to promote something that’s almost but not quite entirely unrelated to it. If you want people to use small batteries in EV’s electrify roads so people can travel on them without using a battery. If you want to reduce the need for cars do that, but don’t pretend lithium mining somehow requires changing cities. Because arguing from a false premise weakens your argument when people see through it.
- fewavewavewa 4y ago
  I love it. Localise and externalise the harm! Just hope the poor souls who have to work in lithium extracing and refining are paid well.
  - Retric 4y ago
    The US could completely source all it’s lithium needs internally and still be vastly better off. It’s got the 5th largest proven reserve of any country, but that’s understating things as lithium is surprisingly abundant we just haven’t had much use for the stuff before lithium ion batteries. In terms of total harm, even people working lithium mines are better off if that eliminates ICE engines.
  - defrost 4y ago
    Good News Central North Americans !! Australia has long been the major supplier of raw lithium concentrate [1] - sending it on to either China or Malaysia [2]. Soon we'll be shipping concentrate to Texas [3] [4] [5] so that the filthy dirty toxic work of heavy rare earths separation can take place as close to the greedy end consumers as possible. [1] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20221110-how-australia-became-the-worlds-greatest-lithium-supplier https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20221110-how-australia-be... [2] https://lynasrareearths.com/ https://lynasrareearths.com/ [3] https://www.mining-technology.com/news/lynas-heavy-rare-earths-us/ https://www.mining-technology.com/news/lynas-heavy-rare-eart... [4] https://thetexan.news/rare-earths-processing-plant-to-open-on-texas-gulf-coast-funded-entirely-by-department-of-defense/ https://thetexan.news/rare-earths-processing-plant-to-open-o... [5] https://www.miningmagazine.com/supply-chain-management/news/1446083/musks-tesla-posts-wanted-ads-for-lithium-refinery https://www.miningmagazine.com/supply-chain-management/news/...
  - MoreSEMI 4y ago
    I am not sure if you are opposed to the idea of localized damage. That is the best thing you can do as then one can control it far easier. It is much easier to test for emissions from on coal plant powering all the EVs on the road for example than the other scenario of testing each ICE vehicle. As to externalities, no one said that there shouldn’t be taxes or rules in place that make sure that the consumers of lithium don’t internalize the cost.
- lm28469 4y ago
  > A false dilemma, also referred to as false dichotomy or false binary, is an informal fallacy based on a premise that erroneously limits what options are available. The source of the fallacy lies not in an invalid form of inference but in a false premise. This premise has the form of a disjunctive claim: it asserts that one among a number of alternatives must be true. This disjunction is problematic because it oversimplifies the choice by excluding viable alternatives, presenting the viewer with only two absolute choices when in fact, there could be many.
  - Retric 4y ago
    > A false equivalence or false equivalency is an informal fallacy in which an equivalence is drawn between two subjects based on flawed or false reasoning. This fallacy is categorized as a fallacy of inconsistency. Colloquially, a false equivalence is often called "comparing apples and oranges." ICE cars cause damage and lithium causes damage so the damage from lithium must also be significant. Mining the non lithium components of EV’s cause more environmental damage than mining the lithium does. Large infrastructure changes take time. You can of course also improve infrastructure, in road charging largely eliminates the need for giant EV batteries, but waiting is losing. If people want huge big batteries in EV’s then build them, you can always recycle lithium in a few decades it doesn’t get consumed.
    - lm28469 4y ago
      All I'm saying is that no one puts a gun to our head and forces us to have a future with personal cars in the way we have it now But if we start with this (OPs) false dilemma then yes of course, let's all buy a tesla, just don't pretend it'll save the world
      - Retric 4y ago
        Buying EV’s is a huge improvement over not buying EV’s because they last for ~25 years. The size of their batteries is basically irrelevant in comparison. Sure, after we have electrified highways and improved cities they become more viable and could hopefully be the norm. But, in the short term the biggest impact of small batteries is convincing people EV’s suck. Especially when they don’t last for the full lifetime of a car.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
rayiner 4y ago
I was waiting for the “climate justice” folks to start attacking electric cars, because those don’t require fundamentally restructuring where and how Americans live. You can still have Dallas with electric cars and that’s a problem.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  I love how you're so far from the point it sounds like you're legitimately arguing for ending legally enforced car dependence if the scare quotes are removed.
  - mechE321 4y ago
    Is legally enforced train dependence better? City centers are already viable places to live without a car. Unless the US had a waaay higher population density, we would have a hard time arriving at another system.
    - fnordpiglet 4y ago
      I don’t even think it’s just that. Seattle is dense enough and we have an ok public transit system. But it’s just not used that much. There is benefit in privacy and comfort, the ability to move groceries and goods, the ability to get to parts outside your direct transit corridor in a reasonable amount of time, and the fact people enjoy leaving the city for nature regularly. I spent a decade commuting by public transit without a car in Nyc and left to seattle both for work and location but also because I loathed public transit. I know I’m the equivalent of a baby killer, but I hated every moment I spent on public transit with a passion. I just don’t like being in crowds and I hated how long it took to go anywhere not on my subway line, and I barely left the city in my 10 years because there wasn’t public transit (more or less) to the parks.
      - loeg 4y ago
        Seattle had pretty high public transit use prior to the 2020 pandemic, which made it much more unpleasant (both in direct Covid risk/fear and in state response to the virus). See e.g., https://seattletransitblog.com/2022/06/13/transit-ridership-is-slowly-recovering/ https://seattletransitblog.com/2022/06/13/transit-ridership-... or https://www.seattle.gov/images/Departments/SDOT/Streetcar/2021-3-16%20Ridership%20Update%20for%20Website.JPG https://www.seattle.gov/images/Departments/SDOT/Streetcar/20... to see the crater 2020 made in Seattle transit use. Here is a nice graph from back in 2018: https://images.seattletimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/downtown-commutes-W-1.jpg?d=640x640 https://images.seattletimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/d... (from https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/transit-ridership-continues-to-grow-in-central-seattle-while-solo-car-commutes-decline/ https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/tra... ). Transit was the plurality of downtown commuters (and growing).
throwaway22032 4y ago
The Guardian's journalists just want to see cars gone. The majority of them live and work in extremely dense city centres. Not only that, their families do too. They fundamentally don't understand the fact that people have friends, families, jobs, hobbies, etc that exist outside of the metro network. The idea that people might actually enjoy driving is not only something they don't understand but actively detest. It's not good enough to them that all of the roads around me are deliberately rate limited or blocked off so that I can't travel around my own neighbourhood. They can't stand the idea that I could transport myself and my family securely across the country. It has to be trains. I need to share with others. I need to take my bloody jacket to the bathroom with me. I need to lock everything down in case some scrote steals it whilst I'm distracted. Oh yeah, I also have to pay 50% more for that privilege. Nothing is good enough for them. The entire origin of the "you'll eat bugs and be happy" meme comes from that idea that for some people it's not about the climate or ecology, it's about just being happy with a student lifestyle forever. They literally run articles like "we're going childless to save the planet". It's like hanging yourself now to avoid dying of old age.
- felix_n 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - throwaway22032 4y ago
    I live less than 5 miles from Central London and use the tube almost every day. The rest of the world exists outside of it. I have no interest in spending my entire life within the constraints of the train network. As a result of living in a big city, I know a lot of people who are happy with those constraints and they're almost universally boring, preachy jobsworths. Like the entire staff of The Guardian. I'm surprised that they even bothered to found an American subsidiary. There are only about three US cities they could even exist in without having a heart attack.
  - fnordpiglet 4y ago
    Do you think sneering condescension will convince anyone to live in a studio apartment with their 4 kids in a dangerous part of town to appease your aesthetic hatred?
felix_n 4y ago
Somewhat tangential to the main point of the article, but wasn't there some big news somewhat recently about sodium-ion batteries reaching "close-enough" parity with lithium-ion batteries for EVs? Did I get hopeful based on false pretenses?
- slaw 4y ago
  The news was sodium batteries will be available in 2023. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33750955 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33750955
iceTA 4y ago
I am so disappointed in the 3 top level responses to this that I made an account to respond. Everyone here would agree that our addiction to burning oil is unhealthy for the planet. What surprises me is the fact that we can't also see how our addiction to cars is also unhealthy for the planet. It's not a case of wanting to live a student life forever, or the fact that all guardian journos live in a metro area, it's that they (or this one, in particular) understand that electric cars aren't a drop in solution. I think these dismissals are incredibly childish, and something I would expect from a culture war type on Fox News or GB News. I expected better from HN. If I remember correctly, for the entire world to live the same quality of life as Americans, it would require four earths. We obviously can't do that, it's going to require us changing our patterns of consumption, please think about that, and don't get offended when people question your lifestyle.
empthought 4y ago
I think it's important to note what the authors left out: although they dubbed it "white gold" in the article, on Earth lithium is 5000 times more prevalent than gold by ppm.
- throwaway4aday 4y ago
  Gold is a weird comparison, it's valuable because it is rare. How does lithium compare to iron?
  - empthought 4y ago
    Iron's another 2000 times more abundant than lithium, but geologically earth is basically a ball of silicon, iron, and magnesium oxides with some other trace elements along for the ride.
- fnordpiglet 4y ago
  I think they meant “valuable metal” … black gold is probably what they’re drawing an analogy, not actual gold.
  - empthought 4y ago
    That's a bad analogy too, because "black gold" is burned for energy and the process of using it is identical to carbon emission. Both real gold and "white gold" stick around even after we use them, and aren't greenhouse gases themselves.
    - fnordpiglet 4y ago
      It’s not a great article in any dimension really
fnordpiglet 4y ago
The “if only there were more public transit” stuff is a weak argument and a waste of breath. I’m not saying folks shouldn’t continue wasting their breath, it’s an important issue to push. But the issue with public transit is we can’t figure out how to build and operate it and once it’s built it often goes unused making it unsustainable. Further not everyone wants to live in a studio apartment in a dense urban core, no matter how much you sneer at them. They just think you’re an asshole and hops in their suburban and drive to Starbucks. Probably the right solution, and the one being worked on, is to find different battery chemistries. People seem fixated on lithium, but even lithium is a N generation chemistry. (I’m too lazy at 6am to research the value of N, sorry) I know sodium batteries are advancing, iron as well, along with other chemistries that haven’t grabbed headlines yet. With the amount of money at stake, investment and research will happen. Predicting what we are building batteries out of in 20 years seems foolish at this point (note, I think a lot of lithium miners are about to be left holding a bag full of hype)
- defrost 4y ago
  Public transit works and works well, as proved Q.E.D. in many, many, many cities and countries about the globe. The problem in central north america is the Nacirema are a weak minded easy fooled people who have fallen for 50+ years of Koch propaganda and for the most part not even noticed as it happened. https://grist.org/article/the-koch-brothers-hate-public-transit-but-they-cant-always-stop-projects-in-their-tracks/ https://grist.org/article/the-koch-brothers-hate-public-tran... https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/uresposters/290/ https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/uresposters/290/
  - fnordpiglet 4y ago
    I didn’t say it didn’t. But, take high speed rail in the US. Even where political will exists, we fail to execute. In seattle we have rail and bus, but they’re largely empty. I spent a decade taking the subway in Nyc, arguable one of the better transit systems, and a primary reason I left was I found it soul crushing to use it every day. First, I don’t like crowds and hated feeling uncomfortable multiple times a day for a few hours every single day. Second, getting anywhere not in my corridor was a multi hour affair (round trip). Third, getting anywhere was at least 45 minutes one way. Fourth, it was almost impossible to leave the city and visit nature. I may be weak minded and easily fooled, but my direct experiences made my weak mind want to own a car and gtfo of a public transit first urban core. I don’t hate the environment, I don’t think everyone should drive Suburbans. But I also think there’s a saddle point, and technology for batteries isn’t done yet. I also suspect the “everyone who disagrees with my world view is a weak minded easily fooled idiot who can’t form their own opinions are are indoctrinated by a dark conspiracy” line isn’t endearing the public transit first folks to anyone but their echo chamber.

26 points by samizdis 4y ago

Let’s complain about about water damage from firefighting when the other option is to let it burn. Lithium mining causes extremely localized harm, ICE engines cause worldwide damage.

Schroedingersat 4y ago
If you'd read the article you'd see they're arguing for decreasing car dependence whilst simultaneoisly making all new cars BEV. How you can manage to construe that as a bad thing is baffling. To use your analogy it's like attacking someone who wants to stop the arsonist while the firefighters do their job instead of building a new water reservoir.
- Retric 4y ago
  There are many many reasons to reduce our dependence on cars such as reducing particle emissions from tire and break wear, lithium mining is again hardly worth discussing. Lithium mining is ~4 orders of magnitude less harmful than ICE engines. Perhaps someone could have improved the situation by rearranging deck chars on the titanic into a more aesthetic pattern, but it’s not the kind of thing that deserved their attention.
  - defrost 4y ago
    Consuming less is still by far the best approach, better city layouts and greater public transport, etc. As for the Lithium production figures: > Let us consider, for example, electric cars. To give an idea of this effect, producing a battery weighing 1,100 pounds emits over 70% more carbon dioxide than producing a conventional car in Germany, according to research by the automotive consultancy Berylls Strategy Advisors. https://phys.org/news/2023-01-paradox-lithium-net-zero-emissions.html https://phys.org/news/2023-01-paradox-lithium-net-zero-emiss... which to be sure isn't a full life cycle comparison .. but let's be very clear, the full G20 country demand for an electric future creates an unreasonably high demand on copper and rare earth mining and directly impacts all manner of marhinalised people - the US has a $64 billion copper reserve in Arizona on sites considered sacred by Native American tribes. https://resolutioncopper.com/ https://resolutioncopper.com/
    - Retric 4y ago
      > better city layouts and greater public transport Those are useful for other things, if you want smaller batteries add in road charging. Just don’t wait for perfection when you can dramatically improve things today. > 70% more carbon dioxide than producing a conventional car in Germany Only today. Manufacturing currently produces carbon dioxide due to things like a fossil fueled electric grid not as an inherent part of the process. Fixing the grid is also required.
      - Schroedingersat 4y ago
        There's no need to 'wait for perfection' to stop legislating bigger cars and higher car modeshare. We can push for sane streets and phase out ICEs at the same time.
        Retric 4y ago
        Updating cities alone is not enough to remove the need for long range batteries. It’s also a really slow and expensive process.
        Schroedingersat 4y ago
        You're doing that thing where you pretend one person needing something somewhere invalidates improving anything for anyone anywhere else. The reality is the only thing stopping most trips from being made in a light vehicle is the unchecked externalities from the large ones. And only one long range vehicle is 'needed' per household
        Retric 4y ago
        Most households don’t always take long trips to the same places especially when you’re talking long trips in terms of small EV batteries. I am all for improving cities, but just as a baseline not everyone lives in cities. Any long term plan needs to consider everyone not just people who live in dense enough areas public transportation is a clear win. Sure, ban cars in the center of cities, just don’t expect that to change how large most people want their car’s battery to be. This article and discussion is doing the thing where you exaggerate a small problem to promote something that’s almost but not quite entirely unrelated to it. If you want people to use small batteries in EV’s electrify roads so people can travel on them without using a battery. If you want to reduce the need for cars do that, but don’t pretend lithium mining somehow requires changing cities. Because arguing from a false premise weakens your argument when people see through it.
fewavewavewa 4y ago
I love it. Localise and externalise the harm! Just hope the poor souls who have to work in lithium extracing and refining are paid well.
- Retric 4y ago
  The US could completely source all it’s lithium needs internally and still be vastly better off. It’s got the 5th largest proven reserve of any country, but that’s understating things as lithium is surprisingly abundant we just haven’t had much use for the stuff before lithium ion batteries. In terms of total harm, even people working lithium mines are better off if that eliminates ICE engines.
- defrost 4y ago
  Good News Central North Americans !! Australia has long been the major supplier of raw lithium concentrate [1] - sending it on to either China or Malaysia [2]. Soon we'll be shipping concentrate to Texas [3] [4] [5] so that the filthy dirty toxic work of heavy rare earths separation can take place as close to the greedy end consumers as possible. [1] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20221110-how-australia-became-the-worlds-greatest-lithium-supplier https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20221110-how-australia-be... [2] https://lynasrareearths.com/ https://lynasrareearths.com/ [3] https://www.mining-technology.com/news/lynas-heavy-rare-earths-us/ https://www.mining-technology.com/news/lynas-heavy-rare-eart... [4] https://thetexan.news/rare-earths-processing-plant-to-open-on-texas-gulf-coast-funded-entirely-by-department-of-defense/ https://thetexan.news/rare-earths-processing-plant-to-open-o... [5] https://www.miningmagazine.com/supply-chain-management/news/1446083/musks-tesla-posts-wanted-ads-for-lithium-refinery https://www.miningmagazine.com/supply-chain-management/news/...
- MoreSEMI 4y ago
  I am not sure if you are opposed to the idea of localized damage. That is the best thing you can do as then one can control it far easier. It is much easier to test for emissions from on coal plant powering all the EVs on the road for example than the other scenario of testing each ICE vehicle. As to externalities, no one said that there shouldn’t be taxes or rules in place that make sure that the consumers of lithium don’t internalize the cost.
lm28469 4y ago
> A false dilemma, also referred to as false dichotomy or false binary, is an informal fallacy based on a premise that erroneously limits what options are available. The source of the fallacy lies not in an invalid form of inference but in a false premise. This premise has the form of a disjunctive claim: it asserts that one among a number of alternatives must be true. This disjunction is problematic because it oversimplifies the choice by excluding viable alternatives, presenting the viewer with only two absolute choices when in fact, there could be many.
- Retric 4y ago
  > A false equivalence or false equivalency is an informal fallacy in which an equivalence is drawn between two subjects based on flawed or false reasoning. This fallacy is categorized as a fallacy of inconsistency. Colloquially, a false equivalence is often called "comparing apples and oranges." ICE cars cause damage and lithium causes damage so the damage from lithium must also be significant. Mining the non lithium components of EV’s cause more environmental damage than mining the lithium does. Large infrastructure changes take time. You can of course also improve infrastructure, in road charging largely eliminates the need for giant EV batteries, but waiting is losing. If people want huge big batteries in EV’s then build them, you can always recycle lithium in a few decades it doesn’t get consumed.
  - lm28469 4y ago
    All I'm saying is that no one puts a gun to our head and forces us to have a future with personal cars in the way we have it now But if we start with this (OPs) false dilemma then yes of course, let's all buy a tesla, just don't pretend it'll save the world
    - Retric 4y ago
      Buying EV’s is a huge improvement over not buying EV’s because they last for ~25 years. The size of their batteries is basically irrelevant in comparison. Sure, after we have electrified highways and improved cities they become more viable and could hopefully be the norm. But, in the short term the biggest impact of small batteries is convincing people EV’s suck. Especially when they don’t last for the full lifetime of a car.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

rayiner 4y ago

I was waiting for the “climate justice” folks to start attacking electric cars, because those don’t require fundamentally restructuring where and how Americans live. You can still have Dallas with electric cars and that’s a problem.

Schroedingersat 4y ago
I love how you're so far from the point it sounds like you're legitimately arguing for ending legally enforced car dependence if the scare quotes are removed.
- mechE321 4y ago
  Is legally enforced train dependence better? City centers are already viable places to live without a car. Unless the US had a waaay higher population density, we would have a hard time arriving at another system.
  - fnordpiglet 4y ago
    I don’t even think it’s just that. Seattle is dense enough and we have an ok public transit system. But it’s just not used that much. There is benefit in privacy and comfort, the ability to move groceries and goods, the ability to get to parts outside your direct transit corridor in a reasonable amount of time, and the fact people enjoy leaving the city for nature regularly. I spent a decade commuting by public transit without a car in Nyc and left to seattle both for work and location but also because I loathed public transit. I know I’m the equivalent of a baby killer, but I hated every moment I spent on public transit with a passion. I just don’t like being in crowds and I hated how long it took to go anywhere not on my subway line, and I barely left the city in my 10 years because there wasn’t public transit (more or less) to the parks.
    - loeg 4y ago
      Seattle had pretty high public transit use prior to the 2020 pandemic, which made it much more unpleasant (both in direct Covid risk/fear and in state response to the virus). See e.g., https://seattletransitblog.com/2022/06/13/transit-ridership-is-slowly-recovering/ https://seattletransitblog.com/2022/06/13/transit-ridership-... or https://www.seattle.gov/images/Departments/SDOT/Streetcar/2021-3-16%20Ridership%20Update%20for%20Website.JPG https://www.seattle.gov/images/Departments/SDOT/Streetcar/20... to see the crater 2020 made in Seattle transit use. Here is a nice graph from back in 2018: https://images.seattletimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/downtown-commutes-W-1.jpg?d=640x640 https://images.seattletimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/d... (from https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/transit-ridership-continues-to-grow-in-central-seattle-while-solo-car-commutes-decline/ https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/tra... ). Transit was the plurality of downtown commuters (and growing).

throwaway22032 4y ago

The Guardian's journalists just want to see cars gone. The majority of them live and work in extremely dense city centres. Not only that, their families do too. They fundamentally don't understand the fact that people have friends, families, jobs, hobbies, etc that exist outside of the metro network. The idea that people might actually enjoy driving is not only something they don't understand but actively detest. It's not good enough to them that all of the roads around me are deliberately rate limited or blocked off so that I can't travel around my own neighbourhood. They can't stand the idea that I could transport myself and my family securely across the country. It has to be trains. I need to share with others. I need to take my bloody jacket to the bathroom with me. I need to lock everything down in case some scrote steals it whilst I'm distracted. Oh yeah, I also have to pay 50% more for that privilege. Nothing is good enough for them. The entire origin of the "you'll eat bugs and be happy" meme comes from that idea that for some people it's not about the climate or ecology, it's about just being happy with a student lifestyle forever. They literally run articles like "we're going childless to save the planet". It's like hanging yourself now to avoid dying of old age.

felix_n 4y ago
[flagged]
- throwaway22032 4y ago
  I live less than 5 miles from Central London and use the tube almost every day. The rest of the world exists outside of it. I have no interest in spending my entire life within the constraints of the train network. As a result of living in a big city, I know a lot of people who are happy with those constraints and they're almost universally boring, preachy jobsworths. Like the entire staff of The Guardian. I'm surprised that they even bothered to found an American subsidiary. There are only about three US cities they could even exist in without having a heart attack.
- fnordpiglet 4y ago
  Do you think sneering condescension will convince anyone to live in a studio apartment with their 4 kids in a dangerous part of town to appease your aesthetic hatred?

felix_n 4y ago

Somewhat tangential to the main point of the article, but wasn't there some big news somewhat recently about sodium-ion batteries reaching "close-enough" parity with lithium-ion batteries for EVs? Did I get hopeful based on false pretenses?

slaw 4y ago
The news was sodium batteries will be available in 2023. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33750955 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33750955

iceTA 4y ago

I am so disappointed in the 3 top level responses to this that I made an account to respond. Everyone here would agree that our addiction to burning oil is unhealthy for the planet. What surprises me is the fact that we can't also see how our addiction to cars is also unhealthy for the planet. It's not a case of wanting to live a student life forever, or the fact that all guardian journos live in a metro area, it's that they (or this one, in particular) understand that electric cars aren't a drop in solution. I think these dismissals are incredibly childish, and something I would expect from a culture war type on Fox News or GB News. I expected better from HN. If I remember correctly, for the entire world to live the same quality of life as Americans, it would require four earths. We obviously can't do that, it's going to require us changing our patterns of consumption, please think about that, and don't get offended when people question your lifestyle.

empthought 4y ago

I think it's important to note what the authors left out: although they dubbed it "white gold" in the article, on Earth lithium is 5000 times more prevalent than gold by ppm.

throwaway4aday 4y ago
Gold is a weird comparison, it's valuable because it is rare. How does lithium compare to iron?
- empthought 4y ago
  Iron's another 2000 times more abundant than lithium, but geologically earth is basically a ball of silicon, iron, and magnesium oxides with some other trace elements along for the ride.
fnordpiglet 4y ago
I think they meant “valuable metal” … black gold is probably what they’re drawing an analogy, not actual gold.
- empthought 4y ago
  That's a bad analogy too, because "black gold" is burned for energy and the process of using it is identical to carbon emission. Both real gold and "white gold" stick around even after we use them, and aren't greenhouse gases themselves.
  - fnordpiglet 4y ago
    It’s not a great article in any dimension really

fnordpiglet 4y ago

The “if only there were more public transit” stuff is a weak argument and a waste of breath. I’m not saying folks shouldn’t continue wasting their breath, it’s an important issue to push. But the issue with public transit is we can’t figure out how to build and operate it and once it’s built it often goes unused making it unsustainable. Further not everyone wants to live in a studio apartment in a dense urban core, no matter how much you sneer at them. They just think you’re an asshole and hops in their suburban and drive to Starbucks. Probably the right solution, and the one being worked on, is to find different battery chemistries. People seem fixated on lithium, but even lithium is a N generation chemistry. (I’m too lazy at 6am to research the value of N, sorry) I know sodium batteries are advancing, iron as well, along with other chemistries that haven’t grabbed headlines yet. With the amount of money at stake, investment and research will happen. Predicting what we are building batteries out of in 20 years seems foolish at this point (note, I think a lot of lithium miners are about to be left holding a bag full of hype)

defrost 4y ago
Public transit works and works well, as proved Q.E.D. in many, many, many cities and countries about the globe. The problem in central north america is the Nacirema are a weak minded easy fooled people who have fallen for 50+ years of Koch propaganda and for the most part not even noticed as it happened. https://grist.org/article/the-koch-brothers-hate-public-transit-but-they-cant-always-stop-projects-in-their-tracks/ https://grist.org/article/the-koch-brothers-hate-public-tran... https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/uresposters/290/ https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/uresposters/290/
- fnordpiglet 4y ago
  I didn’t say it didn’t. But, take high speed rail in the US. Even where political will exists, we fail to execute. In seattle we have rail and bus, but they’re largely empty. I spent a decade taking the subway in Nyc, arguable one of the better transit systems, and a primary reason I left was I found it soul crushing to use it every day. First, I don’t like crowds and hated feeling uncomfortable multiple times a day for a few hours every single day. Second, getting anywhere not in my corridor was a multi hour affair (round trip). Third, getting anywhere was at least 45 minutes one way. Fourth, it was almost impossible to leave the city and visit nature. I may be weak minded and easily fooled, but my direct experiences made my weak mind want to own a car and gtfo of a public transit first urban core. I don’t hate the environment, I don’t think everyone should drive Suburbans. But I also think there’s a saddle point, and technology for batteries isn’t done yet. I also suspect the “everyone who disagrees with my world view is a weak minded easily fooled idiot who can’t form their own opinions are are indoctrinated by a dark conspiracy” line isn’t endearing the public transit first folks to anyone but their echo chamber.