this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2025
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"So, I don't get why you people keep complaining. This is a green technology! Why are you so mad we've been evaporating the oceans at a speed to keep up with the demand for sodium? As if this is what has been causing all these new hurricanes and flood!"
The current timeline made me into a grumpy pessimist. I need to get out of that mindset.
Here's the thing: sodium chloride aka table salt is extremely abundant. We are not expected to run out of it in any measurable timeframe, and the effect of sodium mining on the oceans or ecosystems at large is negligible.
Same cannot be said of lithium, which currently forms the backbone of battery tech. It is rare, and its extraction is extremely polluting. In fact, lithium is responsible for a huge chunk of renewable energy's ecological footprint.
Switching to sodium technology is like switching from silver to sand. It's just one thing we truly have enough of.
plus one of the main issues with desalination plants for fresh water is… getting rid of the sodium
yeah I don't really think what I've written above is coming. I just expect nothing less from that class than to turn a solution into a new problem. Should have been more explicit about that.
I see. But sometimes, progress really makes lesser problems than there were before.
We have cheap and generally eco-friendly solar, we install plenty of wind, and now we have a much more ecological way to store the power, too.
The rich care about their profits, and if eco-friendly tech delivers that, they'll be all-in. Some fossil kings will try to stop it, but at this point, this trend is irreversible, because others among the rich are ready to destroy them.