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Are electric cars the only answer to a sustainable future? Not quite.
ARE ELECTRIC CARS THE ONLY ANSWER TO A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE? NOT QUITE.
Story by Blake Williams
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Climate change is one of the most important issues facing society today. As more people become aware of the dangers, more people are working to become greener, with electric cars increasing in popularity every year. To put it simply, electric cars are more climate friendly than gasoline-powered cars; however, they still present harmful problems to the environment. Electric vehicles primarily use lithiumpowered batteries to run, but lithium extraction comes at an environmental and social cost — speci cally water pollution and depletion, according to a fact sheet on lithium from Friends of the Earth, a nongovernmental environmental organization. “Toxic chemicals are needed to process lithium,” the fact sheet stated. “ e release of such chemicals through leaching, spills or air emissions can harm communities, ecosystems and food production. Moreover, lithium extraction inevitably harms the soil and also causes air contamination.” Water pollution is caused by chemical leakage that enters the soil and gets into the water supply. is causes poisonings in communities that rely on that water, according to a report from Salon.
Mining lithium is slow and takes a lot of resources. e process takes about 12 to 18 months and uses approximately 500,000 gallons of water per 2,205 pounds of lithium, according to a report from WIRED. Chemical & Engineering News reported that industry analysts expect 2 million metric tons per year of lithium batteries will be generated worldwide by 2030. Nickel and cobalt — the latter of which is o en extracted by child labor without protective equipment — are also used in electric vehicle batteries, and the cost for mining them comes at a potentially huge environmental cost, according to WIRED. Recycling lithium batteries is a di cult process. e plants are costly to build and operate, and require sophisticated equipment to treat the harmful emissions generated by the smelting process, according to Chemical & Engineering News. ey also reported the process and materials used to make lithium batteries vary by manufacturers, and the batteries are not designed to be disassembled, which further complicates recycling. However, lithium batteries can still be used in other areas such as energy storage when they are no longer at the peak e ciency needed for transportation, , according to Loraine Lundquist, a physicist, climate activist and sustainability lecturer at CSUN. is gives lithium batteries a bene t that lead-acid batteries used in gasolinepowered cars don’t have once they are done being used. Despite the toxic e ects of mining for metals and the problems with lithium batteries, the toxic e ects of gasolinepowered cars are worse. Oil extraction and oil spills present problems for the environment and health problems for people who live near re neries, which predominantly a ect low-income communities and communities of color, according to Lundquist. “If you look at the e ects overall, and this is not even taking into account climate change, which is the biggest reason to switch to electric cars,” Lundquist said. “But even if you ignore climate change, the overall negative toxic e ects of gasolinepowered cars are far greater than the overall negative toxic e ects of electric cars.” Lead-acid batteries have also been the cause of serious side e ects, such as lead poisoning. “ ere’s no question that some of the rhetoric about the negatives of electric vehicles is coming quietly from the fossil fuel industry,” Lundquist said. “And that isn’t to say that it isn’t accurate. ere are absolutely negative e ects of all of the di erent materials that are used in electric car batteries. However, you need to weigh them against the negative impact of what we’re already using.” Some of the negative e ects of leadacid battery plants have already been seen in Southern California. In 2015, an Exide battery recycling facility in Boyle Heights was forced to shut down a er it spewed toxic contaminants, including lead and arsenic, into surrounding communities for decades. ese communities are still seeing the e ects of this nearly six years later, according to LAist. It was also recently reported by the Los Angeles Times that a bankruptcy case could allow Exide to evade the cost of the cleanup, which would force taxpayers to pay for it.
So while electric vehicles do present a greener alternative to gasoline-powered cars, the most climate-friendly solution is to make a switch from personal vehicles entirely and invest in a ordable housing, bike
- LoraineLundquist
A Sustainable Path for CSUN Students
Story by Carolyn Burt & Photos by Kaitlyn Lavo
Tucked away behind the baseball eld near student housing lives CSUN’s food garden, which has transformed from a patch of dirt into a home for nearly 65 fruit trees and 200 native plants.
It was established in 2010 when students, faculty, sta , alumni and community members recognized the need to provide a food space. e garden is all organic and does not use any pesticides or synthetic fertilizers, and creates its own compost — or black gold as those in the gardening community like to call it — which provides minerals and foods for the plants.
Mabel Trigueros is the institute garden coordinator and rst started working with the garden this past summer through Agroecology, Farming, and Food Pathway, a program o ered by CSUN’s Institute of Sustainability. AFFP partners with Multinational Exchange for Sustainable Agriculture to o er a three-month long certi cate program, providing participants with hands-on training in farming.
“I enrolled in the certi cate program because I’ve always been into gardening and it’s just like one of my passions,” Trigueros said. She was soon o ered the facilitator role for the program before signing on for the administrative role she has today with the Institute of Sustainability. Trigueros’ favorite part of her role is getting to grow the food, and she has a particular pride with the peppers she’s grown. e garden rotates the food they grow with its corresponding seasons to produce optimal produce. “Yes, you can get tomatoes year round, but are those tomatoes really the best? ey’re not,” Trigueros said. “When you have an heirloom tomato that [is] grown in season and [at] the right time, there’s no taste to compare.”
By growing produce in season, the garden is able to provide a healthy and organic food source to students on campus. While the garden operates at a small scale, any abundance of produce is donated to the CSUN food pantry.
Another focus of the garden is to educate students on how they can grow food and see rsthand where it comes from. e garden is open to volunteers every Tuesday and ursday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., and has just started o ering Saturdays as an option as well. Tasks range from weeding and watering to harvesting the produce. e institute also organizes orange picks, where volunteers come to the Orange Grove to pick up oranges that are later donated to local food pantries.
