Given the recent Lithium battery storage facility fire in Escondido I think it’s high time we reconsider what we are doing with these lithium battery storage facilities.

We think we’re so smart!!

We thought it was a great idea to build nuclear power plants all over the world right up until the Chernobyl and Three Mile Island catastrophes.

Closer to home, the Aliso Canyon gas leak, the worst natural gas leak in U.S. history, from an underground storage facility spewed methane and ethane gas into the atmosphere creating a worse carbon footprint disaster than the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

And we continue to allow families to raise their children within close proximity to high power electric lines where some studies have shown that childhood leukemia is twice as likely to occur. I could go on.

The point being that we shoot from the hip far too often when it comes to solving these types of problems rather than hitting the brakes and letting the research and development continue until we can be more certain that these solutions are safe for our families and our planet.

As I write this article research is ongoing to develop Sodium-Ion batteries which are non-flammable, can withstand up to three times the heat exposure as Lithium-Ion, and are much more cost effective to manufacture.

And so I ask, “What’s the rush toward a Lithium battery solution?” We create these artificial deadlines to get to absolute green on energy, but given the problems and the melt downs are we truly solving these problems?

Let’s place a national (and most certainly local) moratorium on Lithium Battery storage facilities until we can better understand and prevent these environmental disasters.

I want to leave this world a better place for my grandchildren, not worse.

Editor’s note: This piece was written by Mark Dean, a retired mechanical engineer and author living in La Mesa.

(Courtesy image)