this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2023
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Fuck Cars

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[–] Atemu@lemmy.ml 5 points 11 months ago

You’re assuming current (or is that past) levels of renewable energy and no recycling.

See the 40% figure. It assumes realistically achievable goals in the EU for the next decade or two.

most of these metals are infinitely reusable, and just aren’t yet because it’s not worth it until they’re widely used

That's not the problem. The problem is that it's not economical to recycle them. You technically could recycle them in the present day but mining new resources and throwing the old stuff into a landfill is just cheaper and I don't see that changing any time soon, especially not in undemocratic neo-"liberal" places such as the U.S.

This argument also misses that the current demand for transport is much smaller than the future demand will likely be. We aren't even close to putting every human on earth into their own metal box yet; that insanity is still in front of us if we continue like we have been the past century.