[altacc]

Others have gone into the efficiency trade offs and I would add to that removing the local pollution effect of internal combustion engines is a great benefit. Even electric cars "powered by coal" move pollution away from population dense areas and allow large scale environmental harm reduction e.g. carbon capture. However, coal is a declining power source and a lot of the places with high numbers of electric cars already have significant carbon neutral or renewable electricity generation in place.

All you have described, the environmental impact, exploitation, pollution, etc... applies to current fossil fuel usage, if not more, so it's not a black and white choice, as you seem to present it. Fossil fuel had over a century of ever-increasing usage and global environmental damage without having to do anything significant to mitigate the effects. Whereas the relatively new high performance battery industry is already tackling this issue. Without the widespread need generated by electric cars it's questionable if that would happen. It is very rare, possibly unheard of, for such a significant technology to be launched with a perfectly formed lifecycle management in place. The market is created only once the need arises.