Another alt.energy story - batteries

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When people talk about electric vehicles, they gloss over the fact that these require a lot of batteries and that standard lead-acid cells simply do not have the energy density needed. High tech batteries use rare earth elements and we are buying these from 3rd world nations because the environmentalists will not allow us to mine our own resources. The upshot is that these mines are environmental disaster areas with horrible labor conditions. For an example, this article from the London Daily Mail:

Child miners aged four living a hell on Earth so YOU can drive an electric car: Awful human cost in squalid Congo cobalt mine that Michael Gove didn’t consider in his ‘clean’ energy crusade
Picking through a mountain of huge rocks with his tiny bare hands, the exhausted little boy makes a pitiful sight.

His name is Dorsen and he is one of an army of children, some just four years old, working in the vast polluted mines of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where toxic red dust burns their eyes, and they run the risk of skin disease and a deadly lung condition. Here, for a wage of just 8p a day, the children are made to check the rocks for the tell-tale chocolate-brown streaks of cobalt – the prized ingredient essential for the batteries that power electric cars.

And it’s feared that thousands more children could be about to be dragged into this hellish daily existence – after the historic pledge made by Britain to ban the sale of petrol and diesel cars from 2040 and switch to electric vehicles.

Much more at the site - the word you are looking for to describe the environmentalists is Hypocrisy - from the link:

Hypocrisy is the contrivance of a false appearance of virtue or goodness, while concealing real character or inclinations, esp. with respect to religious and moral beliefs; hence in general sense, dissimulation, pretense, sham. It is the practice of engaging in the same behavior or activity for which one criticizes another.

The greens own this word. No denying it.

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About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by DaveH published on August 6, 2017 12:58 PM.

Interesting news on the alt.energy front - Germany was the previous entry in this blog.

Finally, China weighs in - North Korea is the next entry in this blog.

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