Is It Immoral to Drive an Electric Vehicle?

[Valin]

Power Line

John Hinderaker

June 9, 2022

Of all the crazy policies we see implemented around us, from decriminalizing theft to teaching children to change their “gender,” perhaps the craziest is government’s determination to force us to drive electric vehicles. EVs like the Tesla are perfectly fine cars, or would be if they weren’t subsidized or mandated. But they are terrible for the environment, and the conditions under which their materials are mined raise serious ethical questions.

Ronald Stein makes excellent points in his column titled “Is it ethical to purchase a lithium battery powered EV?”

The lower image is just one lithium supply mine where entire mountains are eliminated. Each mine usually consists of thirty-five to forty humongous 797 Caterpillar haul trucks along with hundreds of other large equipment. Each 797 uses around half a million gallons of diesel a year. So, with an inventory of just thirty-five the haul trucks alone are using 17.5 million gallons of fuel a year for just one lithium site.
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Today, a typical EV battery weighs one thousand pounds. It contains twenty-five pounds of lithium, sixty pounds of nickel, 44 pounds of manganese, 30 pounds cobalt, 200 pounds of copper, and 400 pounds of aluminium, steel, and plastic. Inside are over 6,000 individual lithium-ion cells.

It should concern you that all those toxic components come from mining. For instance, to manufacture each EV auto battery, 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.

(Snip)

Mar 5, 2018 A CBS News investigation finds we could still be carrying electronics that contain the product of child labor. A report by Amnesty International two years ago first uncovered that children were mining the mineral cobalt in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It ended up in products of dozens of companies including Apple, Microsoft, Tesla and Samsung. Debora Patta reports.

 

And, of course, to the extent that a tiny percentage of the electricity stored in EV batteries comes from solar panels, they are mostly produce by slave labor in China. And, for what it’s worth, Chinese solar panels are produced with coal-fired power plants.

“Green” energy is a catastrophically bad idea. I think many people understand that wind and solar power and electric vehicles are economically ruinous, but when we also take into account environmental degradation and child and slave labor, one can seriously question whether it is immoral to buy an electric car.

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There Is No Free Lunch