Argentina’s ‘white gold’ rush

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 17 October 2019

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Are lithium-powered electric vehicles as ‘green’ as we think they are? With the advent of electric cars, manufacturers tell us we’re racing towards a clean-energy future. It’s lithium that powers these vehicles. Most of the world’s stocks of this lightest of metals are found in brine deep beneath salt flats, high in the Andes.In Argentina, in Jujuy - the province with the highest percentage of indigenous households in the country - massive projects are underway. But in a super-dry region, with water the most precious resource, and lithium extraction demanding huge quantities of it, there’s anxiety - and outright opposition.

Presenter / producer: Linda Pressly Producer in Argentina: Gert De Saedeleer

(Image: Tomasa Soriano keeps goats and llamas – she believes there’s less water locally since the lithium miners arrived. Credit: BBC/Linda Pressly)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Now if you're a car owner in our climate conscious times, maybe, like me, you're thinking that your
0:06.2	next vehicle just might be electric.
0:09.5	So with that in mind, here's this week's assignment from the BBC World Service. I hope you'll be
0:13.9	engaged by what you hear in the next half hour and if you are perhaps you'll have a
0:17.5	moment to rate us with your podcast provider. So do stay tuned for Argentina's
0:22.3	white gold rush. So do stay tuned for Argentina's White Gold Rush.
0:24.0	It's already on.
0:28.0	The car started?
0:29.0	Yes, absolutely.
0:30.0	It's just one beep and that tiny light that says go and that's it.
0:35.0	Let's go.
0:37.0	Okay. There aren't so many electric cars here
0:41.0	so every time somebody sees one of this many of them ask me if
0:46.0	this is an experimental car some of them ask me if we do some kind of conversion from combustion engines to electric ones.
0:57.0	I'm Linda Presley and in Argentina for this week's assignment on the BBC World Service
1:02.0	I'm taking a ride with Fernando
1:04.2	Konema in Buenos Aires in one of only about 50 carbon neutral electric vehicles or EVs
1:11.1	on the road here.
1:12.1	In a motorway or a highway we can get up to 210 kilometers.
1:18.0	Driving around the city, the maximum range we had was 311.
1:24.0	But there are very few charging points here.
1:26.0	In Buenos Aires, we only have two to charge publicly.
	...

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