Eric Liu: A private company is dominating the reserved areas that were set aside for poor developing nations. He says they've been operating in this world without much oversight. Liu: It really is an illustration that powering electric vehicles is an incredibly complicated task. And it's something that I don't think we've fully come to terms with, he says.
The adoption of electric cars has been hailed as an important step in curbing the use of fossil fuels and fighting climate change. There is a snag, however: such vehicles require around six times as many metals as their gasoline-powered counterparts.
A giant storehouse of the necessary resources sits at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. But retrieving them may, in turn, badly damage the environment.
Guest: Eric Lipton, an investigative reporter for The New York Times.
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