SOURCE:
The Dark Side Of Electric Vehicles - Climate Change Dispatch
Electric vehicles (EVs) are being pitched as cleaner greener and sustainable, but are they?
What’s clean for the environment may not really be clean. Hidden beneath the shiny exteriors of an EV is the story of blood batteries. [bold, links added]
An electric car runs on a battery. But do you know what these batteries are made of? Rare metals like lithium and cobalt. The cobalt gives the battery stability and allows it to operate safely.
Half of the cobalt produced goes into electric cars. We’re talking about four to 30 kilos of cobalt per battery. Seventy percent of the total supply comes from one country. Congo. The Democratic Republic Of Congo.
This search for cobalt drives human rights violations, extreme poverty, and child labor.
China is one of the villains in this story. Are electric carmakers equally guilty too? WATCH VIDEO (nine minutes):