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This article contains some wild swearing.

The planet's economist

has Kate Rayworth's Founder Model for Sustainable Living by Hetty O'Brien.

Consider the electric car.

Sleek and nearly silent.

It is a good example of how far the world has progressed in fighting the climate crisis.

Its carbon footprint is around three times smaller than its petrol equivalent

and unlike a regular car.

It emits none of the greenhouse gases that warm the planet

or noxious fumes that pollute the air.

That's the good news.

Then consider that the battery of an electric car uses eight kilograms of lithium,

likely extracted from briny pools on South America's salt flats,

a processor has been blamed for shrinking pasture lands and causing desertification.

The 14 kilograms of cobalt that prevent the car's battery from overheating

have probably come from the Democratic Republic of the Congo

where cobalt mines have contaminated water supplies and soil.

As the demand for electric vehicles grows,

...