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DannyBlind t1_ixqk81i wrote

Reply to comment by [deleted] in U.S. Renewable Energy Will Surge Past Coal and Nuclear by Year’s End by VanillaSwimming5699

Disclaimer: i kind of went off on a rant there, but in my excuse, im passionate about this shit because I've been active into environmentalism for the last 20 years. Strap in, it's going to be a long one. Also please don't take anything i say personally, that is not my intention.

>(...) require a lot of destructive mining to procure the necessary metals.

I always hear the argument from bad faith actors, not that you are one but please double check your info and their sources. This argument gets tauted for batteries aswell.

Now I don't argue that the mining and refinement process is not polluting, on the contrary, it's pretty damn destructive.

HOWEVER, are people really arguing that extracting the nessecary minerals from litteral rock and dirt is more cost effective than taking the worn materials (ie: solar panels or batteries) and refine those back into useable minerals?

In addition we have the alternatives: oil/coal/gas. Burning these produces a shitton of pollutants other than CO2! A buddy of mine worked as a safety council in regards to nuclear waste. His work was making sure that all materials salvaged from a decommissioned nuclear reactor didnt exceed a certain radiation threshold. They had to stop multiple times because the coal powerplant, a bit xurther away, caused so much extra background radiation that it would exceed the thresholds by over 10x!

Also, that is just burning the garbage. Now lets talk about the procurement of said fossil fuels. Sure mining cobalt is pretty bad, but how many oil spills happened in recent memory? How big was the scale of the affected area and how bad were their repercussions?

Thats just oil, what about the coal mines? The workers have a massive increase in risk of cancer, if the don't die of blacklung that is. Also what do we do with depleted mines? We abandon them. We cant fill them with water due to risk of contamination of the water table (heavy metals like mercury, lead or arsenic/the chemicals that might've been used during extraction). We might use them for storage, but that costs too much money so we leave them as is.

Now we can talk about natural gas. Sure it burns cleaner, but storage and transport is a massive issue. In addition it is more cost effective to not fix leaks and just pay the fines due to massive lobbying. This releases multiple metric fucktons of raw methane into the air. If memory serves me right, methane is roughly 32x worse than CO2. But it degrades, no worries! Into CO2...

Individuals cutting back on their consumerism is a fraction of a drop in an ocean. For example what dafuq does it matter if I half my waste output, for 2 garbage bags a week to 1, while an average mcdonalds produces a container of garbage per day? What difference does it make if i take a bike to work instead of my car while international shipping starts burning bunker oil (that is such dirty fuel that it needs to be preheated to 40C before its even liquid!) as soon as they touch international waters? Why does it matter if i take shorter showers while the argicultural sector uses over 40% of all potable water that they pollute after use because of massive over fertilisation?

Now people will argue: "but all these problems exist because of peoples consumerism!" No it doesn't. The individual gets the choice between a bad option and a worse option. The only real short term solutions is a carbon tax, sweeping legislation and a massive clamp down on political corruption and industries across the board while improving international relationships so everybody starts getting their shit together!

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[deleted] t1_ixqmsz1 wrote

We agree with each other.

I guess I'm using the word consumerism less as an individual practice, and more as a culturally accepted state of the world. To me, that state of the world of course implicates the companies you listed such as McDonalds, and the idea that we need all of that international shipping you mentioned. While i think it's naïve to remove individual humans from sustainability, after all, our consumption habits in the Global North will in fact have to change for a more sustainable future. We also though indeed don't individually have the power to change it, it must be initiated far earlier in the chain. Environmentalists have been traumatized by "consumerism" being weaponized by highly-polluting companies to shift blame to individuals, and that's disingenuous of companies, but removed from that political context we must be sober-minded about how we are a part of consumerism. I find it equally disingenuous when people paint a picture of companies making changes, our lives (in rich countries) being largely unaffected, and the world subsequently healing. Our lives will be affected because if the planet consumed the way the US does, we'd have already run out of planet.

You pose the harms of mining against the harms of fossil fuels, but that's not what was happening in my head. The harms of fossil fuels are a given and out of the question. I think about the harms of mining vs not mining (as much as possible) and not burning fossil fuels.

World A: Status quo - very bad

World B: Consumption and energy needs stay the same, but we use renewable energy - bad

World C: Consumption and energy needs go way down, and we use renewables for what's left that is required - good.

Note on refining metals from used products back into usable materials, that's so good, but still not ideal if paired with current consumption and energy needs. Not having to mine more for a new solar panel would be cool, but that solar panel would still fuck with the environment the way solar panels, and wind, and hydroelectric, and geothermal, currently do. That's why less all around is preferable. I really fuck with Degrowth as an economic policy, rather than "Green Growth." I recommend Jason Hickel and Giorgos Kallis as excellent scholars that have written a lot of super accessible and persuasive stuff on the subject.

Edit: Formatting on mobile

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DannyBlind t1_ixrrimp wrote

Refreshing to see a constructive argument on reddit these days.

I agree with your points however i am more cynical as a person. In my eyes your arguments are too idealistic. Humans are greedy. It will be extremely hard to shift an entire society to consuming to such a less extend that your vision becomes reality.

That is to say that my vision is also verly idealistic but I think better achievable. I see the mining more as a bad investment that makes up for it in the long run as the pollution is more localised and therefore easier to deal with. In addition it puts less emphasis on the production of fossil fuels.

We already see this with the recent mass adoption of electric cars and covid. Fossil fuel prices went down across the board making it less tempting to upscale production. On the contrary, it helped downscale production. I think continuing this trend is the key

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