I often get the question whether replacing fossil fuel with electric propulsion in vehicles is right. Let’s see why batteries are better in spite of the pushbacks about Lithium sustainability.
The usual pushback is that Lithium is difficult to extract and the conditions in Lithium mines are inhumane. This is true, but the supply chain for the production of batteries is still developing and we have the tools to ask for more sustainable production of Lithium, so in the long run we can get rid of these issues.
The problem with this pushback is that it misses the forest for the trees. It uses a single argument which gains relatively much media attention, against a fact that does not gain almost any media attention. That is, more than 8 million people die every year because of fossil fuel emissions.
We tend to forget about this social cost, but it is about 1 person in 1000 being killed by fossil fuels. And we don’t do anything about it because we can’t. This is how fossil fuels work. With electric propulsion we can do much better!
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