The Troubling Environmental Impacts of a Battery-Related Mining Boom

Did you know that the average electric car has a mining footprint 100x its weight in earth and ore?

The reality behind all those pretty advertisements of “zero-emission” electric cars | Pixabay

The world is slowly waking up to a rather inconvenient truth about electric cars: They’re simply replacing unsustainable extraction of fossil fuels with unsustainable extraction of critical battery minerals.

Mining is an inherently environmentally destructive endeavor, and several of the materials required by EVs are particularly problematic. But still, it will probably take far too long for advocates to overcome their carbon tunnel vision and recognize these serious impacts.

A recent depiction of carbon tunnel vision that made some waves on social media

Here’s a quick rundown of the impacts related to some key EV minerals:

• Lithium mining needs lots of water, but resources are generally located in water-stressed areas. It also causes high levels of environmental toxicity.
• Nickel has substantial ecological toxicity that is spread by the large amounts of dust created in the mining and refining process.
• Cobalt brings similar toxicity challenges in…