Our Web of Inconvenient Truths

Our Web of Inconvenient Truths

November, 2021 newsletter from Katie Singer

After my newspaper showed a man charging his electric vehicle (EV) with a caption that he worries “only about replacing his tires, wiper blades and air filter,” I wrote the following letter to the editor:

When electric vehicle owner Mr. C. worries only about replacing his tires, wiper blades and air filter, I assume he doesn’t know economist Herman Daly’s principles: Don’t take from the Earth faster than it can replenish. Don’t waste faster than the Earth can absorb.

Does Mr. C know about the water taken from farmers to dope his EV’s transistors and process his battery’s lithium? The children maimed and buried alive while mining for his battery’s cobalt? The 10 million+ murders over coltan (extracted for batteries)? Does he know about the pure carbon (such as Tar Sands’ petroleum coke) for smelting silicon for his EV’s transistors? What about n-hexane, swiped on EVs’ circuit boards, which gives swipers leukemia?

Does he know about his vehicle’s fire hazards? Firefighters use 20,000 – 30,000 gallons of water to extinguish an EV fire—and should stand watch over it for 24 hours, since EV batteries can re-ignite, several times. Nationwide, only 10% of firefighters are trained to handle EV fires. A traditional vehicle fire typically extinguishes with 300 gallons of water.

If there’s a forum for discussing these issues (this letter doesn’t scratch an EV’s surface) with due diligence, and for learning to live with less new, industrially-produced goods (including EVs), I don’t know about it.

While marketers greenwash the fossil fuels, extractions, toxic waste and worker hazards involved in manufacturing EVs—and the roads, chargers and power plants required to operate them—by calling these vehicles “sustainable,” “net-zero emitters,” they perpetuate the illusion that consumptive living can continue.

Mr. C. might not worry. I sure do.

For more info about EV hazards, read www.OurWeb.tech/letter-5; www.OurWeb.tech/letter27.

Katie Singer and Dene Nation Elder Francois Paulette will speak at the NOVA Institute’s 10th annual InVivo conference on Planetary Health. In “Connect the Dots: there is no net zero,” Katie will describe the real environmental cost of electronic devices and telecom infrastructures, Wednesday December 1rst. https://www.invivoplanet.com/2021-meeting.html

NATO Energy Security Centre of Excellence has just published Tom Troszak’s paper, “The hidden costs of solar photovoltaic power.” It explains the fossil fuels and energy-intensive processes involved in manufacturing solar-grade silicon for solar panels. To make electronic-grade silicon for computers’ transistors, the process is slightly more complicated.  https://www.enseccoe.org/data/public/uploads/2021/11/d1_energy-highlights-no.16.pdf

For more info about the hazards of solar PVs, including their PFA coating (yikes!): www.OurWeb.tech/16

Do you use free or proprietary software? Why does MIT Prof. Richard Stallman not use a cellphone? Are you allowed to repair your electronic devices? To learn answers to these questions, watch “Hacking for the Commons,” Phillippe Borrell’s documentary. While this film presents the problems that come from making a few people wealthy (via software)…and failing to provide for the common good, we still need due diligence that protects the Earth from new extractions, new manufacturing, new waste. How do we protect the Earth as we manufacture new tech, including “free” software?

https://vimeo.com/channels/1540870/393778517

Miguel Coma’s new article, Is the WHO impaired by electro-smog? a commentary on regulating 5G radiation, was published by Wall Street International Magazine, November 23, 2021. www.OurWeb.tech/letter-32
All of Katie Singer and Miguel Coma’s reports about tech’s impacts on nature are available at www.OurWeb.tech/letters.