RE:Tom Rand: The pros and cons of lithium extraction in CanadaMany good points from Tom Rand. Thank you Carkny.
There is a big misconception however on the role of electric powered vehicules that not many talk about.
Most people try to compare the carbon footprint of ICE vehicules with EV's without talking about the real issues.
Batteries and oil are like apples and oranges and should not be compared at all.
Ultimately, the energy stored in your battery comes from........coal, nuclear, hydro power, wind, ect...
But at the moment. worldwide there is a rather small portion that comes from "clean" sources.
One real gain of EV's over ICE is the efficiency. EV's get around 80% of the stored energy to your wheels while ICE gets barely 40%.
That is where the true gain is.
But for pollution, the gain is much smaller than that and until the clean sources of energy (nuclear being the best choice since fusion is decades away) take over, the main thing that EV's are accomplishing is moving the pollution out of large habitated cities to rural areas (into the nature)
There are 440 nuclear plants operating at the moment and 55 new ones are planed to come on line in the next 6 years. This is mostly hapenning in Asia. And with all this online, the estimates show a lowering of 1 degree of global warming by 2050.
It often takes 10 years or more to start a nuclear plant from scratch.