Electric cars 'pose environmental threat'

[RoadieRoger]

The skills are being lost in lots of Industries as they are transferred abroad , weaving and the garment trade , coal mining , TV manufacturing , radios etc . Who will teach the new generation to wield a pick or work up a sweat ?

 

[jackhandy]

I wonder what the truth really is, as to the planet's oil reserves:

A long-standing customer of mine is an ocean surveyer, driving robotic submersibles, prospecting for oil: He told me a couple of years ago, that there's enough oil (already found) off Alaska & South America, I think, to last at least the next 4 or 5 hundred years.

 

[Scimitar]

Even if there is that much oil - which I don't believe, by the way - are we going to just burn it all and eventually run out anyway, even if we don't choke to death first?
Oil is far too precious a resource and chemical feedstock to just burn - it's a criminal waste, in my opinion.

 

[NRG]

The oil is there all right, getting it is the problem. Deep sea wells are an environmental issue and can be a disaster waiting to happen as we all saw in the Gulf of Mexico.

 

[flecc]

Agreed, there is plenty of oil, we have no idea how much we will eventually be able to recover, but I also agree that wantonly burning it in all the ways we do is a dreadful waste of a finite resource. One day well into the future it will become in very short supply and that will blight future generations in a variety of ways.

 

[the_killjoy]

A bigger and more immanent problem will be the shortage of rare earth metals.

 

[Scimitar]

A bigger and more immanent problem will be the shortage of rare earth metals.

I read somewhere that when the price goes up enough it will become financially viable to start extraction in Chile and other places. Apparently, there's no absolute shortage of them, it's just they are much more concentrated in China, hence cheap to extract.

 

[the_killjoy]

I agree, but the definition of a shortage is that there will be a significant increase in cost as it becomes more expensive to mine.