The environmental impacts of electric vehicle batteries range from mining, and energy and water use to the hazards of discarded batteries. These issues can be resolved, but there’s no time to waste.
A highway loops around a tailings pond at the Syncrude facility in Fort McMurray, Alta. The proximity of such toxic wastewater ponds to nature threatens its biodiversity.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh
As toxic water continues to spill from tailings ponds across mining developments, decades of scientific research provides evidence of how wildlife will be affected.
Amazon rainforest, Brazil: a Yaulapiti man rides a motorcycle.
BrazilPhotos / Alamy Stock Photo
Lithium extraction in Bolivia poses more than environmental questions: It illustrates how notions about ‘raw materials’ can be at odds with Indigenous relations with the land.
Smouldering fire in a drained peatland near Fort McMurray, Alta. produces smoke from underground. These ecosystems are affected by rising temperatures, drought, wildfire and various human actions including drainage.
(Leyland Cecco)
New research shows that northern peatlands may not help regulate our climate by the end of the century.
International human rights mechanisms alone cannot offer reliable solutions to racism, including racism affecting racialized migrants. Protestors support migrant worker rights in front of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, in Toronto, in August 2020.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Christopher Katsarov
Dignity is at the centre of many rights-based declarations, but to eradicate racist policy and practices, we must commit to noticing each other’s personhood in new ways.
A new process to quickly remove radioactive chemicals from water and other liquids and trap them in a clay-like substance could make nuclear waste management much easier.
Two trucks transport gold ore from Barrick Cowal Gold Mine in New South Wales, Australia.
Jason Benz Bennee/Shutterstock
The WA radioactive capsule was discovered within two weeks. But in 1980, when a mine worker was discovered to have stolen 2,200 kilograms of uranium oxide, it had been missing for 3 years.
Should the capsule not be found immediately, we can’t just write it off as lost. A long term system of monitoring is needed to protect humans and the environment.
Deep sea sponges and other creatures live on and among valuable manganese nodules like this one that could be mined from the seafloor.
ROV KIEL 6000/GEOMAR
Mining nodules from the deep ocean seabed could provide the metals crucial for today’s EV batteries and renewable energy technology, but little is known about the harm it could cause.
Locals from Asunción Mita, Guatemala recently voted against the development of mining activities in their municipality, in a referendum contested by a Canadian mining company that owns a gold mine.