The problem is we’re not treating it like an emergency.

During COVID world governments provided basically infinite resources to promising vaccine candidates. We developed brand new types of vaccines for a novel virus in a third of the time it takes us to make existing vaccines for well known viruses. We are not doing the same for promising battery technologies.

We could also be regulating the market for smarter use of the lithium we have. Lithium batteries for stationary mass storage (“big batteries”) are completely pointless, except maybe as part of virtual power networks. Subsidising and incentivising recycling and recovery of lithium from waste is another low hanging fruit we seem to not be bothering with.

Absolutely it’s true for a global emergency threatening to destroy the global ecosystem, a local ecosystem and cultural site is a sensible sacrifice (not withstanding that we shouldn’t be in this scenario in the first place.)

But we have barely scratched the surface in terms of alternative options and it’s fair to be frustrated when you’re the one expected to sacrifice when other options have not really been tried.