NYT admits the truth about lithium car batteries.

[DonGlock26]

"The Dirty Truth About Your Clean-Energy Car

In a new book, Nicolas Niarchos traces the mineral supply chain for lithium-ion batteries, exposing their considerable human and environmental costs.

No object is marketed with a greater sense of messianic promise than the electric vehicle. Here, we are told, is the corrective to centuries of environmental catastrophe as the price of material gain. Here is the antidote to climate change.

Yet that framing has always sat uneasily alongside a troubling reality: Extracting and processing the raw materials needed to make the electric car’s central element — the batteries — entails its own environmental destruction, along with the exploitation of workers.

The journalist Nicolas Niarchos is intent on confronting us with this tension, transporting us on a world tour of its uncomfortable implications. His book, “The Elements of Power: A Story of War, Technology, and the Dirtiest Supply Chain on Earth,” is a deeply reported revelation of the human costs of mining the minerals on which those batteries depend, from cobalt in the Democratic Republic of Congo to nickel in Indonesia."

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/16/books/review/the-elements-of-power-nicolas-niarchos.html?unlocked_article_code=1.E1A.-MMC.PY_ZbD0TeSOU&smid=url-share

How did this article get past the NYT editorial politburo? Of course, electric vehicles are not good for the economy or the planet.
Automakers have lost billions. Like always, the Left's pseudo-religion of "clean energy" was a lie.

 

[Lesh]

So you think that coal mining is environmentally friendly?

Oil drilling?

 

[DonGlock26]

So you think that coal mining is environmentally friendly?

Oil drilling?

No, and I never lied about it. The Left lied about "clean green energy".

 

[Lesh]

No, and I never lied about it. The Left lied about "clean green energy".

I remember the right lying about “clean coal”… so

 

[petro]

So you think that coal mining is environmentally friendly?

Oil drilling?

No one ever claimed they were. Just that lithium mining is just as bad and the vehicles still require a host of toxic materials to even be made.
No such thing as clean energy, period.
Everything has an environmental cost.

Fact is that 1/2 ton pickups with V8 engines are still America's most popular vehicles.

 

[Woodznutz]

Green energy isn't so green? I'm shocked.

 

[Lesh]

No one ever claimed they were. Just that lithium mining is just as bad and the vehicles still require a host of toxic materials to even be made.
No such thing as clean energy, period.
Everything has an environmental cost.

Fact is that 1/2 ton pickups with V8 engines are still America's most popular vehicles.

That was pretty pointless.

Yes all things have a cost. In order to have a real discussion ya need to compare them honestly.

That’s not happening here.
Oh and. I love my 1/2 ton Ram.

 

[DonGlock26]

I remember the right lying about “clean coal”… so

So, the Left lied then?

Source?

 

[RoshawnMarkwees]

These hazards have been known for some time already. Ignored by NYT and every other democrat Pravda outfit.
NYT is like Bill Maher; democrat propagandists who, whenever correct, are usually ten years late to the party.

 

[Rogue AI]

I remember the right lying about “clean coal”… so

Not in extraction, but vastly improved scrubbers and filters to decrease pollutants. Since you NIMBY assholes won't mine minerals here, there is virtually no environmental protection in these mining operations. Who am I kidding, you racists don't give a damn about brown people 'over there' so long as you can virtue signal here.

 

[TimFitz]

"The Dirty Truth About Your Clean-Energy Car

In a new book, Nicolas Niarchos traces the mineral supply chain for lithium-ion batteries, exposing their considerable human and environmental costs.


View attachment 1207212



No object is marketed with a greater sense of messianic promise than the electric vehicle. Here, we are told, is the corrective to centuries of environmental catastrophe as the price of material gain. Here is the antidote to climate change.

Yet that framing has always sat uneasily alongside a troubling reality: Extracting and processing the raw materials needed to make the electric car’s central element — the batteries — entails its own environmental destruction, along with the exploitation of workers.

The journalist Nicolas Niarchos is intent on confronting us with this tension, transporting us on a world tour of its uncomfortable implications. His book, “The Elements of Power: A Story of War, Technology, and the Dirtiest Supply Chain on Earth,” is a deeply reported revelation of the human costs of mining the minerals on which those batteries depend, from cobalt in the Democratic Republic of Congo to nickel in Indonesia."

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/16/books/review/the-elements-of-power-nicolas-niarchos.html?unlocked_article_code=1.E1A.-MMC.PY_ZbD0TeSOU&smid=url-share

How did this article get past the NYT editorial politburo? Of course, electric vehicles are not good for the economy or the planet.
Automakers have lost billions. Like always, the Left's pseudo-religion of "clean energy" was a lie.

It is VERY obvious that y ou did not read the review.

BTW, this IS a book review, not a news articles.

 

[DonGlock26]

It is VERY obvious that y ou did not read the review.

BTW, this IS a book review, not a news articles.

Can you explain or is this just a drive by posting?

 

[TimFitz]

Lithium ion batteries are recyclable.

 

[TimFitz]

Can you explain or is this just a drive by posting?
E

Can you explain or is this just a drive by posting?

Easily!

First of all, your headline is a lie.

This is not the New York Times “admitting” anything.

It is a book review. Apparantly you can’t tell the difference.

Perhaps you were fed this on X or one of the right wing trash blogs which misrepresented it, and you’re just parroting.

And, had you bothered to read it, you would have known that it is not a good review.

You also added the BS about the NYT “Politburo”, which is a standard throwaway line, routinely tossed out by right wingers who never read any newspaper, much less the Times.

In addition, you toss out the “drive by” shtick, an empty dismissal that Limbaugh used to entertain his audience with.

 

[DonGlock26]

Can you explain or is this just a drive by posting?
E


Easily!

First of all, your headline is a lie.

This is not the New York Times “admitting” anything.

It is a book review. Apparantly you can’t tell the difference.

Perhaps you were fed this on X or one of the right wing trash blogs which misrepresented it, and you’re just parroting.

And, had you bothered to read it, you would have known that it is not a good review.

You also added the BS about the NYT “Politburo”, which is a standard throwaway line, routinely tossed out by right wingers who never read any newspaper, much less the Times.

In addition, you toss out the “drive by” shtick, an empty dismissal that Limbaugh used to entertain his audience with.

The NYT published the truth accidentally, I suppose.

How is it not a good review? Do you see that type of mining in the Third World as "Earth friendly"?

 

[TimFitz]

The NYT published the truth accidentally, I suppose.

How is it not a good review? Do you see that type of mining in the Third World as "Earth friendly"?

This is a BOOK REVIEW, not a new article. You clearly don’t know the difference. So, forget the. BS about the Times “accidentally” publishing the truth.That is self serving right wing prattle.

I know you did not read this review in the Times. (indeed, I doubt that you have read it yet).

“How is this not a good review?”

“Unfortunately, this trove of material is served up with scant attention to narrative. The result is a book that is frequently a bewildering slog.”

“At bare minimum, we need a narrator who tells us why we are going where we are going, and what we hope to grasp when we get there. Niarchos abdicates that fundamental duty, yanking us from here to there and back again absent any discernible organizing principle. He withholds judgment, leaving us to sift through ambiguous implications as we try to assemble a coherent takeaway from an often overwhelming barrage of facts.

The book is marred by observations that seem obvious, such as Niarchos’s apparent discovery that European colonialism was less than noble.”

 

[DonGlock26]

This is a BOOK REVIEW, not a new article. You clearly don’t know the difference. So, forget the. BS about the Times “accidentally” publishing the truth.That is self serving right wing prattle.

I know you did not read this review in the Times. (indeed, I doubt that you have read it yet).

“How is this not a good review?”

“Unfortunately, this trove of material is served up with scant attention to narrative. The result is a book that is frequently a bewildering slog.”

“At bare minimum, we need a narrator who tells us why we are going where we are going, and what we hope to grasp when we get there. Niarchos abdicates that fundamental duty, yanking us from here to there and back again absent any discernible organizing principle. He withholds judgment, leaving us to sift through ambiguous implications as we try to assemble a coherent takeaway from an often overwhelming barrage of facts.

The book is marred by observations that seem obvious, such as Niarchos’s apparent discovery that European colonialism was less than noble.”

Here's the headline:

The Dirty Truth About Your Clean-Energy Car
In a new book, Nicolas Niarchos traces the mineral supply chain for lithium-ion batteries, exposing their considerable human and environmental costs.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/16/books/review/the-elements-of-power-nicolas-niarchos.html?unlocked_article_code=1.E1A.-MMC.PY_ZbD0TeSOU&smid=url-share

I'm shocked the NYT printed it.

 

[TimFitz]

Here's the headline:




I'm shocked the NYT printed it.

Why would you be?

It’s a book review, and not a good one.

The Times frequently publishes reviews of books that may not represent their editorial views. Which is what real journalism is all about.

But you don’t read, so you clearly don’t know the difference between open minded presentation of ideas and facts, and partisan propoganda.

Learn to read, instead of just parroting the trash you read on right wing social media.