California just banned gas lawn mowers/leaf blowers and here’s how this could potentially be a bad thing for the environment.

82,000 tons of lithium were mined in 2020.
Up from 28,100 in 2010.

It’s estimated that the earth has 14 million tons of lithium available in active mines.

140,000 tons of cobalt was mined in 2020.
Up from 107,000 tons in 2010.

Available reserves show cobalt at 7.1 million tons.

Writing this, the future is clearly electric cars.
America now has 1.3 million electric cars.
287 million cars total.
0.45% of cars registered are electric.

Joe Biden set a goal to have 50% of cars be electric by 2030.

That won’t happen, but most analysts show the number to be 19 million by 2030 and 66 by 2040.

Much more realistic.

Here’s where electric mowers become a problem.

Electric cars use a lot of lithium & cobalt.

17.6 pounds of lithium on average.
30.8 pounds of cobalt.

1.5 billion cars can be made with current lithium supplies.
45 million cars of cobalt.

Those numbers seem like nothing to worry about, but the problem.

Phones
Smart watches
Laptops
Tablets

And yes, electric mowers.

They all use lithium & cobalt also.

For lawn mowers, 5-6 million lawn mowers are sold every year.

This means that going electric, like in California, if taken nationally would add millions of pounds in demand to the global demand for lithium & cobalt.

Not to mention, it’s something where the cost of mowers will rise and impact many Americans seeking basic lawn car.

Now, is the potential for a lithium/cobalt shortage a real possibility?

The good news is there is 60 million more tons of lithium identified in locations that haven’t been tapped as mines and cobalt is similar, but accessing those mines is a huge challenge both money wise and environmentally.

I don’t think we’ll ever see an actual shortage, but it’s not efficient to take a product like a lawn mower, which is something most homes not use often and have that raise the price of batteries, for something used often like cars and phones.

I don’t think this policy really makes any sense.

If anything, we should just have a straight carbon tax of 20% and divide the money across the board and give every American a check from that at the end of the year.

But hiking cobalt/lithium demands to make people buy more expensive lawnmowers which they don’t use regularly seems like a bad idea.

Happy to be proven wrong here, but surface problems exist.