Clearthinker, You wrote, "You must be a scientist as, like most of the others, you have not evaluated the causes of environmental damage correctly. By far the most costly elements of product production and use are the creation and disposal of the product. So to retain an already extant product in use for a longer period and not replace it with a new one, however environmentally friendly its producer claims it to be, will always trump the production of a new item. When will scientists understand this very simple fact?" You go on to cite electric cars as a specious example of apparent environmental harmlessness, because, you say, the car has to be thrown away when the battery loses capacity.
I don't know where you got this idea about you vs "scientists". Any scientist worthy of the name does indeed recognize that the calculation of environmental friendliness or lack thereof is a product of many complex considerations. As regards electric cars, one of them would certainly be issues you mention. However, taking Tesla as a prime example, you are incorrect on nearly all your assumptions. Batteries in the original Tesla autos have a 200,000 mile life expectancy, and at the end of life, they certainly are replaceable by the factory or by any competent local electric vehicle mechanic. Current Tesla car batteries have a life expectancy of 500,000 miles. They are also re-cyclable at end of life. Most gasoline engine cars are rusting in the junk yard by or before they've done 200,000 miles. Both types of car can be crushed and recycled, when it comes to that.
There is definitely a place for wood in analog audio. Wood can be an excellent component of a plinth built for constrained layer damping, in layers with other types of materials. In that application, infinitesimal changes of shape are first of all constrained by other tightly packed layers and second of all not important. Wood tonearms are perhaps controversial, but I've owned a Reed for about a decade, and it is still straight as an arrow per a laser measurement. (We don't put our tonearms outside in the weather, so concerns about warpage are way overblown in my opinion.)
