What is a battery?' I think Nicholas Tesla said it best when he called it an Energy Storage System. That's an important distinction.
They do not make electricity – they store electricity produced elsewhere, primarily by coal, uranium, natural gas-powered plants, or diesel-fueled generators. So, to say an EV is a zero-emission vehicle is not at all valid.
Also, since forty percent of the electricity generated in the U.S. is from coal-fired plants, it follows that forty percent of the EVs on the road are coal-powered, do you see?
Einstein's formula, E=MC2, tells us it takes the same amount of energy to move a five-thousand-pound gasoline-driven automobile a mile as it does an electric one. The only question again is what produces the power? To reiterate, it does not come from the battery; the battery is only the storage device, like a gas tank in a car.
There are two orders of batteries, rechargeable, and single-use. The most common single-use batteries are A, AA, AAA, C, D. 9V, and lantern types. Those dry-cell species use zinc, manganese, lithium, silver oxide, or zinc and carbon to store electricity chemically. Please note they all contain toxic, heavy metals.
Rechargeable batteries only differ in their internal materials, usually lithium-ion, nickel-metal oxide, and nickel-cadmium. The United States uses three billion of these two battery types a year, and most are not recycled; they end up in landfills. California is the only state which requires all batteries be recycled. If you throw your small, used batteries in the trash, here is what happens to them.
All batteries are self-discharging. That means even when not in use, they leak tiny amounts of energy. You have likely ruined a flashlight or two from an old, ruptured battery. When a battery runs down and can no longer power a toy or light, you think of it as dead; well, it is not. It continues to leak small amounts of electricity. As the chemicals inside it run out, pressure builds inside the battery's metal casing, and eventually, it cracks. The metals left inside then ooze out. The ooze in your ruined flashlight is toxic, and so is the ooze that will inevitably leak from every battery in a landfill. All batteries eventually rupture; it just takes rechargeable batteries longer to end up in the landfill.
In addition to dry cell batteries, there are also wet cell ones used in automobiles, boats, and motorcycles. The good thing about those is, ninety percent of them are recycled. Unfortunately, we do not yet know how to recycle single-use ones properly.
But that is not half of it. For those of you excited about electric cars and a green revolution, I want you to take a closer look at batteries and also windmills and solar panels. These three technologies share what we call environmentally destructive embedded costs.
Everything manufactured has two costs associated with it, embedded costs and operating costs. I will explain embedded costs using a can of baked beans as my subject.
In this scenario, baked beans are on sale, so you jump in your car and head for the grocery store. Sure enough, there they are on the shelf for $1.75 a can. As you head to the checkout, you begin to think about the embedded costs in the can of beans.
The first cost is the diesel fuel the farmer used to plow the field, till the ground, harvest the beans, and transport them to the food processor. Not only is his diesel fuel an embedded cost, so are the costs to build the tractors, combines, and trucks. In addition, the farmer might use a nitrogen fertilizer made from natural gas.
Next is the energy costs of cooking the beans, heating the building, transporting the workers, and paying for the vast amounts of electricity used to run the plant. The steel can holding the beans is also an embedded cost. Making the steel can requires mining taconite, shipping it by boat, extracting the iron, placing it in a coal-fired blast furnace, and adding carbon. Then it's back on another truck to take the beans to the grocery store. Finally, add in the cost of the gasoline for your car.
A typical EV battery weighs one thousand pounds, about the size of a travel trunk. It contains twenty-five pounds of lithium, sixty pounds of nickel, 44 pounds of manganese, 30 pounds cobalt, 200 pounds of copper, and 400 pounds of aluminum, steel, and plastic. Inside are over 6,000 individual lithium-ion cells.
It should concern you that all those toxic components come from mining. For instance, to manufacture each EV auto battery, you must process 25,000 pounds of brine for the lithium, 30,000 pounds of ore for the cobalt, 5,000 pounds of ore for the nickel, and 25,000 pounds of ore for copper. All told, you dig up 500,000 pounds of the earth's crust for just one battery."
Sixty-eight percent of the world's cobalt, a significant part of a battery, comes from the Congo. Their mines have no pollution controls, and they employ children who die from handling this toxic material. Should we factor in these diseased kids as part of the cost of driving an electric car?"
I'd like to leave you with these thoughts. California is building the largest battery in the world near San Francisco, and they intend to power it from solar panels and windmills. They claim this is the ultimate in being 'green,' but it is not! This construction project is creating an environmental disaster. Let me tell you why.
The main problem with solar arrays is the chemicals needed to process silicate into the silicon used in the panels. To make pure enough silicon requires processing it with hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid, nitric acid, hydrogen fluoride, trichloroethane, and acetone. In addition, they also need gallium, arsenide, copper-indium-gallium- diselenide, and cadmium-telluride, which also are highly toxic. Silicone dust is a hazard to the workers, and the panels cannot be recycled.
Windmills are the ultimate in embedded costs and environmental destruction. Each weighs 1688 tons (the equivalent of 23 houses) and contains 1300 tons of concrete, 295 tons of steel, 48 tons of iron, 24 tons of fiberglass, and the hard to extract rare earths neodymium, praseodymium, and dysprosium. Each blade weighs 81,000 pounds and will last 15 to 20 years, at which time it must be replaced. We cannot recycle used blades. Sadly, both solar arrays and windmills kill birds, bats, sea life, and migratory insects.
There may be a place for these technologies, but you must look beyond the myth of zero emissions. I predict EVs and windmills will be abandoned once the embedded environmental costs of making and replacing them become apparent. "Going Green" may sound like the Utopian ideal and are easily espoused, catchy buzzwords, but when you look at the hidden and embedded costs realistically with an open mind, you can see that Going Green is more destructive to the Earth's environment than meets the eye, for sure.
If this had been titled : "The Embedded Costs of Going Green," would you have read it?
Crypto’s Sanction-Slipping Power: Why Bitcoin’s Neutrality Is Its Greatest Humanitarian Asset
Decentralized networks such as Bitcoin’s don’t know national allegiance, they only know math. And when you’re trying to get your savings out of an ATM, or send a payment to relatives in a war-torn environment, someone else’s politics is the last thing you want standing in the way of you and your loved ones’ well-being — regardless of what colors may be on the flag waving above your head.
The Human Cost of Sanctions
There are no winners in war. Bankers and politicians start them, and everyday individuals like you and I are told to suffer, fight, kill one another, and die.
Picture this: You live in Russia. The value of your money — the ruble — is tumbling. What’s more frightening are the long lines forming in front of ATMs and banks, and the confusion at public transportation hubs as major corporations like Google and Apple are restricting services, while major banks are cut off from the SWIFT payments network.
While you are completely against war, and even have relatives in the Ukraine, according to many media reports you are their sworn enemy. Even the institutions you somewhat trust, such as forward-thinking cryptocurrency exchanges, are being pressured to “sabotage ordinary users” by top-ranking government officials. This is the nature of sanctions.
Luckily, true, decentralized crypto is still available as an option to move and preserve value. Just have a look at all the honking for peace that recently went on in Ottawa, Canada. In the Ukraine, too, as your relatives seek shelter in the midst of a conflict they never asked for, they are being aided by crypto donations that aren’t subject to arbitrary borders drawn by politicians. Heck, the government itself is asking. Crypto is a tool. It can be used by anyone, for better or for worse.
No matter what the major news outlets are shouting about, or which side is viewed as right or wrong, you can continue to control your money.
Sanctioned Areas Globally See Individuals Turn to Crypto
The ripple effect of the new wave of so-called western sanctions against the people in Russia is already being braced for. As Bitcoin.com news reported just this week, some economists in Venezuela are already predicting trouble for Venezuela’s banking system (and in effect, of course, people), as major Russian banks are now being banned from accessing SWIFT. Venezuelan economist Jose Guerra took to Twitter to explain:
Any country with significant financial ties to Russia will likely feel the sting of restrictions on trade.
Moving up to Cuba, a country whose residents have had to deal with U.S. trade embargoes for decades, one can also see the impact of restrictions on free trade. And because of this, crypto has historically been a valuable tool here as well.
A Reuters report from back in 2019 notes that the “roll-out of mobile internet nearly a year ago has opened the way for cryptocurrency transactions, and enthusiasts have multiplied as the currency helps overcome obstacles created by U.S. sanctions on Cuba.”
The report tells of a small business owner who was able to purchase parts for his mobile phone repair shop online with crypto, which were unavailable in the local economy. Computer scientist Adrian C. Leon also emphasized in the same article:
For foreigners, cryptocurrencies is just another option, but for Cubans it is a necessity and can be a solution to their exclusion from the global financial community.
The nation of Iran has become a hot topic as well, when it comes to the heated debate about sanctions and crypto. A 2021 report by the Iranian think tank Presidential Center for Strategic Studies suggested that newly-minted bitcoins could be leveraged for the purpose of trade beyond geopolitical restrictions. The report detailed:
“As the newly-extracted bitcoins are not easily traceable, despite the pressure of sanctions on the country, domestic economic actors can use newly-extracted cryptocurrencies, which are preferable to existing bitcoins, on international exchanges.”
Draconian Calls to Stifle Crypto Freedom Increase
Of course, countries typically viewed in western media as terroristic using cryptocurrencies to slip sanctions is seen as a major problem.
“You either need to regulate them or ban them. I don’t think there is a middle ground,” Informed Choice chartered financial planner Martin Bamford stated in an Express interview from May 2021, speaking about potential cryptocurrency tax havens. He further noted: “A global crypto currency tax or a global crypto currency regulation ban would be the most effective way of doing it, but only if you can get all the countries on board.”
When Bamford was asked which governments might not cooperate, he answered: “Russia, China, or Iran.”
Bamford’s prescription seems to be taking shape and gaining currency (no pun). Just last month, global investment bank JPMorgan’s managing director and head of Regulatory Affairs, Debbie Toennies, declared: “I do think we need a globally consistent regulatory framework. It’s important that we get to a solution as quickly as possible.”
Other notable forces calling for global regulation are European Central Bank Chief Christine Lagarde and leading centralized cryptocurrency exchange Binance. For her part, Lagarde retreated to the tired trope of crypto being the money of criminals, stating:
“It’s a highly speculative asset, which has conducted some funny business and some interesting and totally reprehensible money laundering activity.”
Of course, these arguments have been laid to rest by statistics several times over, with fiat’s financing of illicit activity massively dwarfing Satoshi’s supposed contribution to crime. And this crime itself is all too often defined by corrupt lawmakers, and not any logical, ethical compass.
When we’re dealing with the caliber of folks who proudly state that literally starving 500,000 children to death is “worth it” for sanctions’ sake, we’d do well to take giant step back and reevaluate.
Thus Spoke Satoshi: for Humanity’s Sake
The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche famously said of governments:
A state, is called the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly lieth it also; and this lie creepeth from its mouth: ‘I, the state, am the people.’ It is a lie! Creators were they who created peoples, and hung a faith and a love over them: thus they served life. Destroyers, are they who lay snares for many, and call it the state: they hang a sword and a hundred cravings over them.
That sword, those snares — just look at the SEC. Look at the IRS. Look at the central banks of the world and the governments and money they weaponize. These are not the creators Nietzsche is speaking of. These creators are the innovators, the dreamers, and the developers of protocols and code that allow for free worldwide trade regardless of political affiliation or lack thereof.
If the goal of regulators is truly “financial inclusion” and the fostering of innovation while protecting investors, why do they seek so desperately to cut the one promising economic lifeline the poor and struggling of the world have right now, and strangle it with red tape? I think we all know the answer.
Crypto uses math, not fear-mongering. And thus, it is a threat. It’s a neutral tool like any other. It can be leveraged for both good and ill. There are numerous non-violent ways for communities to choose how they do or do not wish to leverage and/or regulate these technologies, without state laws or other such arbitrary, violence-backed decrees.
Our mission is better served by focusing on individual needs above those of any government or political faction. The People’s Money is an exit strategy for humans, a weapon for peace, not for war.
So please, donate to those who need it. In Russia, in Ukraine. Anywhere. Even where someone with political-fueled ignorance tells you not to. Nobody can stop the movement of peer-to-peer electronic cash, short of shutting down the internet or violently wresting your keys from your possession. And at that point, we’ll need to finally address some very fundamental elephants in the room, anyway.
What are your thoughts on economic freedom in the context of the current global situation? Let us know in the comments section below.
Graham Smith is an American expat living in Japan, and the founder of Voluntary Japan—an initiative dedicated to spreading the philosophies of unschooling, individual self-ownership, and economic freedom in the land of the rising sun.
.jpg)
.jpg)
