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While this issue is worth exploring and talking about from a policy and science perspective it’s disappointing that the article doesn’t mention that solar e-waste is still considerably less harmful, and much smaller in scale than fossil fuel waste.

I sent this to a friend of mine who is an energy expert who reminded me about how terrible coal ash is: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Dan_River_coal_ash_spil...

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A more interesting comparison, moving forward, in my mind, is with nuclear waste. Solar and nuclear both make low carbon electricity and prevent air pollution heath impacts of combustion. Yet most people oppose nuclear because of the waste products.

Here we have to compare solar making large amounts of moderately toxic waste from solar that remains toxic forever vs. nuclear making very small amounts of extremely toxic waste that becomes less toxic over time. Clearly more people dislike nuclear waste, but the E=MC² thing makes it so small that it can be completely internalized.

At the very least, it is valuable to talk about the negative externalities of decarbonizing at scale with solar as we debate the details of the clean energy transition.

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