Hello

> You might be quite surprised as not only is the lithium tough to
> source the cobalt is worse and both are very important at the
> moment for contemporary Li-ion battery manufacture.

Ooh, I can't go to bed. Somebody on the internet is wrong :)

Lithium is actually quite common. See the "Occurrence"
section at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium

"as common as chlorine in the earth's crust" is the TL;DR

As for cobalt. LiFePo batteries replace the cobalt with
iron - the "Fe" stands for iron. So that problem is solved.
Done. Dusted. And sodium is about to replace lithium too.

But even if the propaganda is out of date, there
is a teachable moment here. Notice how we are told that
cobalt is a conflict mineral. Perhaps. But also note how
nobody talks about "conflict gasoline" which is a
way bigger problem. Do you ask your friends if they
their gasoline purchase is funding a dictatorship
or war somewhere ? Odds are it does.

The flow of oil in the world is a major geopolitical
lever. A quarter of world shipping is petroleum and
its products. Established powers use this as a means to
dominate lesser ones. China, for all its flaws, has figured this
out and is solving it by moving to solar and EVs.

This shift will favour the developing world. Not only
are they the ones being dominated, rather than doing the
dominating, they also tend to be closer to the equator
where winters are minor, and batteries only need to last
the night rather than a long, dark winter.

When you read the news that EV sales are sluggish
and then a month later that EV tariffs are going up
then what your are witnessing is a disinformation effort
very similar to the one that had us believe that smoking
does not cause cancer or that climate change is a mean
hoax by dorky scientists.

Remember: The citizens of developed democracies are typically
victims of much more sophisticated propaganda than those
living under dictatorships. The propaganda of dictatorships
can be crude as the citizens there don't get to vote.
Democracies need to distract their citizens, to make elections
a pointless spectacle and a sideshow. Don't be a victim.

regards

marc