It says 8 years of "Driving", not how much carbon is released making a big, effing, cast-iron Buick power plant. Wouldn't that be more equivalent?
Tesla car battery production releases as much CO2 as 8 years of gasoline driving
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It says 8 years of "Driving", not how much carbon is released making a big, effing, cast-iron Buick power plant. Wouldn't that be more equivalent?
.. You do understand that all of the copper wire required for the motor, let alone the rare Earths mining required for the batteries also expend a great deal of GHGs to acquire from the ground (let alone the mfg process), right?
You do understand that a gasolene powered auto has copper windings in the alternator, starter motor, induction coil, fuel pump and of course, that big, honking copper mine of a radiator core, the computer that controls ignition, the other one that controls injection... none of which are required for a direct drive electric motor.
You do understand all of that, don't you?
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And by 2040 electric will still be less than 50% of vehicles.
Where are the iron, copper, aluminium and REE mines that are required to build a whirlygig?
Oh and where will the gear box oil come from?
IRON
COPPER
ALUMINIUM
REES
LITHIUM
Right - so you are supporting my point that all sorts of mining causes damage. Or perhaps you didn't get the point.
Here is the future as it is currently unfolding.
Careful You will upset those who do not understand that technology changes; especially when a better way of doing things comes along.
I wonder what those statistics would have looked like in 1750.
And yet...
The death of the internal combustion engine
https://www.economist.com/news/lead...ood-run-end-sight-machine-changed-world-death
Gotta love it.
2 years into buddy's oh-so insightful prediction and yep, no end in sight, especially with $0.60 gas.
The Limits of Clean Energy
The conversation about climate change has been blazing ahead recently. Propelled by the school climate strikes and social movements like Extinction Rebellion, a number of governments have declared a climate emergency, and progressive political parties are making plans—at last—for a rapid transition to clean energy under the banner of the Green New Deal.
This is a welcome shift, and we need more of it. But a new problem is beginning to emerge that warrants our attention. Some proponents of the Green New Deal seem to believe that it will pave the way to a utopia of “green growth.” Once we trade dirty fossil fuels for clean energy, there’s no reason we can’t keep expanding the economy forever.
This narrative may seem reasonable enough at first glance, but there are good reasons to think twice about it. One of them has to do with clean energy itself.
The phrase “clean energy” normally conjures up happy, innocent images of warm sunshine and fresh wind. But while sunshine and wind is obviously clean, the infrastructure we need to capture it is not. Far from it. The transition to renewables is going to require a dramatic increase in the extraction of metals and rare-earth minerals, with real ecological and social costs.
We need a rapid transition to renewables, yes—but scientists warn that we can’t keep growing energy use at existing rates. No energy is innocent. The only truly clean energy is less energy.
In 2017, the World Bank released a little-noticed report that offered the first comprehensive look at this question. It models the increase in material extraction that would be required to build enough solar and wind utilities to produce an annual output of about 7 terawatts of electricity by 2050. That’s enough to power roughly half of the global economy. By doubling the World Bank figures, we can estimate what it will take to get all the way to zero emissions—and the results are staggering: 34 million metric tons of copper, 40 million tons of lead, 50 million tons of zinc, 162 million tons of aluminum, and no less than 4.8 billion tons of iron.
In some cases, the transition to renewables will require a massive increase over existing levels of extraction. For neodymium—an essential element in wind turbines—extraction will need to rise by nearly 35 percent over current levels. Higher-end estimates reported by the World Bank suggest it could double.
The same is true of silver, which is critical to solar panels. Silver extraction will go up 38 percent and perhaps as much as 105 percent. Demand for indium, also essential to solar technology, will more than triple and could end up skyrocketing by 920 percent.
And then there are all the batteries we’re going to need for power storage. To keep energy flowing when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing will require enormous batteries at the grid level. This means 40 million tons of lithium—an eye-watering 2,700 percent increase over current levels of extraction.
That’s just for electricity. We also need to think about vehicles. This year, a group of leading British scientists submitted a letter to the U.K. Committee on Climate Change outlining their concerns about the ecological impact of electric cars. They agree, of course, that we need to end the sale and use of combustion engines. But they pointed out that unless consumption habits change, replacing the world’s projected fleet of 2 billion vehicles is going to require an explosive increase in mining: Global annual extraction of neodymium and dysprosium will go up by another 70 percent, annual extraction of copper will need to more than double, and cobalt will need to increase by a factor of almost four—all for the entire period from now to 2050.
The problem here is not that we’re going to run out of key minerals—although that may indeed become a concern. The real issue is that this will exacerbate an already existing crisis of overextraction. Mining has become one of the biggest single drivers of deforestation, ecosystem collapse, and biodiversity loss around the world. Ecologists estimate that even at present rates of global material use, we are overshooting sustainable levels by 82 percent.
Take silver, for instance. Mexico is home to the Peñasquito mine, one of the biggest silver mines in the world. Covering nearly 40 square miles, the operation is staggering in its scale: a sprawling open-pit complex ripped into the mountains, flanked by two waste dumps each a mile long, and a tailings dam full of toxic sludge held back by a wall that’s 7 miles around and as high as a 50-story skyscraper. This mine will produce 11,000 tons of silver in 10 years before its reserves, the biggest in the world, are gone.
To transition the global economy to renewables, we need to commission up to 130 more mines on the scale of Peñasquito. Just for silver.
Lithium is another ecological disaster. It takes 500,000 gallons of water to produce a single ton of lithium. Even at present levels of extraction this is causing problems. In the Andes, where most of the world’s lithium is located, mining companies are burning through the water tables and leaving farmers with nothing to irrigate their crops. Many have had no choice but to abandon their land altogether.
Meanwhile, chemical leaks from lithium mines have poisoned rivers from Chile to Argentina, Nevada to Tibet, killing off whole freshwater ecosystems. The lithium boom has barely even started, and it’s already a crisis.
And all of this is just to power the existing global economy. Things become even more extreme when we start accounting for growth.
As energy demand continues to rise, material extraction for renewables will become all the more aggressive—and the higher the growth rate, the worse it will get.
It’s important to keep in mind that most of the key materials for the energy transition are located in the global south. Parts of Latin America, Africa, and Asia will likely become the target of a new scramble for resources, and some countries may become victims of new forms of colonization. It happened in the 17th and 18th centuries with the hunt for gold and silver from South America. In the 19th century, it was land for cotton and sugar plantations in the Caribbean. In the 20th century, it was diamonds from South Africa, cobalt from Congo, and oil from the Middle East. It’s not difficult to imagine that the scramble for renewables might become similarly violent.
If we don’t take precautions, clean energy firms could become as destructive as fossil fuel companies—buying off politicians, trashing ecosystems, lobbying against environmental regulations, even assassinating community leaders who stand in their way.
Some hope that nuclear power will help us get around these problems—and surely it needs to be part of the mix. But nuclear comes with its own constraints. For one, it takes so long to get new power plants up and running that they can play only a small role in getting us to zero emissions by midcentury. And even in the longer term, nuclear can’t be scaled beyond about 1 terawatt. Absent a miraculous technological breakthrough, the vast majority of our energy will have to come from solar and wind.
None of this is to say that we shouldn’t pursue a rapid transition to renewable energy. We absolutely must and urgently. But if we’re after a greener, more sustainable economy, we need to disabuse ourselves of the fantasy that we can carry on growing energy demand at existing rates.
Of course, we know that poorer countries still need to increase their energy use in order to meet basic needs. But richer countries, fortunately, do not. In high-income nations, the transition to green energy needs to be accompanied by a planned reduction of aggregate energy use.
How might this be accomplished? Given that the majority of our energy is used to power the extraction and production of material goods, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggests that high-income nations reduce their material throughput—legislating longer product life spans and rights to repair, banning planned obsolescence and throwaway fashion, shifting from private cars to public transportation, while scaling down socially unnecessary industries and wasteful luxury consumption like the arms trade, SUVs, and McMansions.
Reducing energy demand not only enables a faster transition to renewables, but also ensures that the transition doesn’t trigger new waves of destruction. Any Green New Deal that hopes to be socially just and ecologically coherent needs to have these principles at its heart.
getpocket.com/explore/item/the-limits-of-clean-energy
Terence Corcoran: The hottest doc of the year kills green energy
Looking for an eye-opening hot doc to relieve the tedium of rewatching the second season of Homeland? Then grab that tablet, phone or remote and head straight for the Earth Day release on YouTube of Planet of the Humans, a Michael Moore-produced documentary that blows up the entire green energy industry, from solar to wind to hydrogen and biomass, from Al Gore to General Motors and Michael Bloomberg, as a giant capitalist fraud.
After just a day on YouTube, Planet of the Humans — get it? — has registered more than one million views (free) as I write this. It’s hard to know whether each of the million who hit on the video watched all 140 minutes of the documentary’s dead-pan expositions of the corporate, bureaucratic, green activist, media and political schemers behind the renewable energy movement, but chances are most viewers would not hit the pause button.
Whether or not all would accept the grim underlying moral premise that humans are destroying the planet — described as the “human-caused apocalypse” — most would certainly be compelled to agree that great political and economic manipulation has gone into creating the green renewable energy illusion.
The maker of Planet of the Humans is Jeff Gibbs, a Michael Moore collaborator whose rabid anti-capitalist documentaries are as entertaining as they are often wrong-headed. Not this one. While Gibbs delivers monotone voice-over and on-camera descriptions of humans as suicidal pursuers of infinite growth, he also reveals the backgrounds and double-standard inner workings of the corporate coalitions between Big Green and Big Business.
Watch as a parade of corporate celebs and brands — Gore, Bloomberg, Richard Branson, GM, Jeremy Grantham, Goldman Sachs and many others — line up in partnership with the biggest names in the environmental movement behind assorted renewable energy concepts — solar power, wind, biomass and coconut oil — that Gibbs demonstrates offer little to offset the carbon emissions of fossil fuels.
Watch as a succession of big-name enviros — Bill McKibben of 350.org, various Sierra Club executives, The Nature Conservancy, Robert Kennedy Jr. — emerge as conflicted and evasive when confronted by the obvious contradictions and falsehoods behind their support of renewables and their partnership with major corporations.
Near the end of Planet of the Humans, Gibbs summarizes what he believes he has documented. “The takeover of the environmental movement by capitalism is now complete. Environmentalists are no longer resisting those with a profit motive, but collaborating with them.” Here Gibbs may have it backwards. It’s the greens who have conned conniving capitalists.
Some of the claims about the economics and environmental impacts of green energy might seem a lot more credible were it not for the dodgy evasiveness of the green movement’s leaders when confronted by their often apparent double standards.
Perhaps the hardest hit in Planet of the Humans is McKibben, legendary green activist who some years ago threw his support behind adopting biomass — especially woodchips from newly logged forests in the United States — as a substitute for coal. Cornered and questioned at a rally about his support for the burning of biomass, McKibben weasels his way through an evasive answer before walking away from Gibbs’ questions. Later, Gibbs shows McKibben delivering a keynote speech in support of biomass.
The Sierra Club, in its Beyond Coal campaign, became another official proponent of biomass, which Gibbs describes as “getting out of bed with coal companies and into bed with logging companies.”
McKibben also hilariously flubs his way through an interview in which he is asked to divulge the sources of 350.org’s funding. Oh, gee, I dunno, he says. I don’t keep track of such things. He then mentions some obscure German funder. Only under prodding does he admit that, well, yeah the Rockefeller and the Pew foundations are major backers.
One of my favourite scenes involves General Motors executives at the unveiling of the automaker’s first electric vehicle, the Chevy Volt, at a plant site in Lansing, Mich. Gibbs is on hand to ask about the source of the electricity to power the Volt. Where does it come from? The GM official says it comes from the power source flowing through the adjacent building. But what is the source of the power? Gee, I don’t know, says the GM official. It could be a bit of coal, but I think it’s natural gas. Gibbs then interviews a local Lansing official who concedes, in the end, that 95 per cent of local electricity comes from coal.
But perhaps most revealing to many viewers will be the environmental and economic realities behind solar and wind power. The natural resources needed to produce solar panels — including coal and quartz — are seldom noted by proponents. Vast amounts of energy and materials are needed to build wind turbines.
To devastating effect, if not quite total fairness, Gibbs and his associates visit early U.S. solar and wind projects that have not quite lived up to their promise. The fact that windmills and solar panels have limited lifespans may come as news to many. The main problem — that the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow all the time — is highlighted many times by industry experts.
As a documentary, Planet of the Humans drops a bombshell on the green movement, the renewable energy industry, and talk of a Green New Deal. It also attempts to demolish capitalism and portray human existence as a scourge on the planet. That dichotomy should make Planet of the Humans the hottest doc of the year.
business.financialpost.com/opinion/terence-corcoran-the-hottest-doc-of-the-year-kills-green-energy
If there is a market for Oscar Meyer weinermobiles, someone will make and sell Oscar Meyer wienermobiles.
Oh yeah. Watching these 'greenies' have to admit their super duper green technology actually exists only due to it's continued reliance on fossil fuels is alone worth the time spent. IMHO
Someone should send that Swedish child a copy.
I most certainly watched the entire documentary, Avro. As for going off the deep end, what about proving that so-called green initiatives are still reliant on fossil fuels justifies that claim? Maybe YOU should watch the documentary before making such specious comments.
I'm no big fan of Moore's but that does not negate the facts presented in the documentary nor that those flocking to 'green energy' are just as responsible for ecological destruction, harm to indigenous communities whose lands are being pillaged for the precious metals needed for solar panels or wind turbines and the fact that in spite of raving about how 'clean' the energy is, they refuse to acknowledge that without fossil fuels as back-up - for times the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow - such projects are little more than feel good moves for Eco-fascists and greenies alike. In addition, as the documentary and a number of well researched articles have pointed out, many of these hugely expensive projects have a very short shelf-life and already falling apart and being left to decay.
It's an anti corporate film pushing for population control.
This has Moores name all over it.
It's left of the left.
That it is and a fine one too. And population control is a bad idea? Why?
Yes...........yes it does............heck he even produced it.
I don't care if it's left of left or right of right or anywhere in-between. What matters is that billions of dollars are being thrown away by government subsidized corporations claiming their products are clean energy when they are anything but.