A lot of EV consumers bought new battery-powered cars in the hope it would be better for the environment than a vehicle with a conventional internal combustion engine that runs on fossil fuels. By some measures, that's no doubt true.
But many of these early adopters are also unaware their supposedly "green" cars aren't quite as carbon neutral as promised and that there are serious labor and human rights problems related to the metals used to manufacture the batteries that power those EVs.
Krista Shennum, a climate and human rights researcher at Climate Rights International, joins Cobus & Antonia to discuss the situation in Indonesia where Chinese mining companies dominate the all-important nickel sector that's rife with labor and environmental abuses.
SHOW NOTES:
Climate Rights International: Nickel Unearthed -- The Human and Climate Costs of Indonesia's Nickel Industry: https://cri.org/reports/nickel-unearthed/
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China and the Indonesia Nickel Trade: Measuring the True Labor and Environmental Cost