The recent threat video by world famous hacker group Anonymous to one and only Elon Musk reveals certain interesting facts which we all need to understand and be aware of! As I was analysing the video, I figured out that the statement on Lithium ion batteries used in electric cars has some/huge amount of blood and sweat of children who are manipulated/exploited. But keeping the electric cars aside, almost all batteries manufactured recently (past 1 decade) has Lithium/cobalt in it as main ingredient. And when we say batteries, we are referring to a vast variety of electronically operating devices like mobile phones, laptops, solar charger, large energy storage, electric chargers, cars(both electric and non electric), robots, rockets, and many more! In other words, the use cases of Lithium and cobalt as means of energy storage are such that we find it in almost every other electronic devices we find(potentially more in coming days). From the points above, you must have by now realised what I am trying to prove here! We are living our standard lifestyle without even realising what went into the products we use everyday! The thing is we are all part(indirect/direct) of the exploitation Anonymous was referring to in the video and I very much appreciate and am thankful for bringing up such an important fact which we might have missed!
Also, apart from the child right exploitation and labour, Lithium and cobalt mining is indeed a highly anti-environment friendly activity. Once a location is discovered for lithium and cobalt, and we proceed with mining, the whole ecosystem of the location is diversified which inturn might be the causing displacement of many flora and fauna pre-existing in the ecosystem before the mining started or even extinction to some. It's more like digging a hole in the earth to save the earth. That's not Sustainable. In fact, the whole solar energy concept if put to use with Lithium and Cobalt as main storage ingredients, it cannot be called Sustainable. Yes, it might help Earth mitigate global warming to some extent, but the retrospective effect it brings in with the extraction process is way more dangerous than the overall global warming/climate change problem. We are made to believe that these are Sustainable solutions to energy crisis and climate change but in reality, they are boosting the process in a highly unsustainable way threatening human civilization and other lifeforms.
Then comes the question, what's the other solution to cope with the problem. In fact, all methods of energy production and storage has its own positive side as well as negative side! Even hydro power projects, windmills, thermal power plant or even nuclear power plants, they all have it's pros and cons. We just have to diversify the utilisation with a superiorly sustainable option. I do have faith in the human civilization that we would bring other better solution which are favorable for both Humans as well as mother Earth. It's a matter of time which is what mother Earth does not have. We need a global community of scientists and researchers to bring up the perfect solution to the said problem for a sustainable human civilization as well as mother Nature in general.