The Mineral The Future Is Built On
What Next | Daily News and Analysis
Slate Podcasts
4.3 • 2.4K Ratings
🗓️ 2 February 2022
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Cobalt is the most important mineral of the future. It’s a key part of lithium-ion batteries, which power cell phones and laptops, not to mention electric cars. That demand is giving rise to a mining industry in Idaho, which sits atop a giant cobalt deposit. But the environmental costs of extraction raise questions about what “clean energy” really means.
Guest: Michael Holtz, freelance journalist and author of “Idaho Is Sitting on One of the Most Important Elements on Earth.”
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I think that the holidays feel like frozen noses. I love walking with the dog for long periods of time. |
| 0:10.0 | Hopefully it's snowing and you've got to wrap up warm. So I think a frozen nose is a sweaty armpit |
| 0:15.0 | because your wrapped up so warm but then you're climbing hamps and heath and you get to the top |
| 0:20.0 | and you're like, and then you can see the breath but then your nose is still freezing to touch. |
| 0:25.0 | Join in every sip with red carp snown back at Starbucks. |
| 0:44.0 | Back in August, President Biden hosted a Made for Television event on the White House lawn. |
| 0:50.0 | It was about electric vehicles. |
| 0:53.0 | Please, everybody sit down. Please, please, please. |
| 0:58.0 | The president wore his signature aviator sunglasses as he stepped up to the microphone. |
| 1:03.0 | Someone had parked a bunch of trucks behind him for visual interest. |
| 1:07.0 | Eventually he ended up driving in electric jeep and circles around the White House. |
| 1:12.0 | It was hard not to feel like the communications team was working overtime to spark interest in something a lot of Americans are not thinking much about. |
| 1:20.0 | Not just electric vehicles, but all of the things that go into building them. |
| 1:25.0 | And a key part of electric vehicle to state the obvious is the battery. |
| 1:30.0 | And right now 80% of the manufacturing capacity for these batteries is done in China. |
| 1:35.0 | You know, it was back in August that President Biden announced that by 2030 he wanted half of all new cars going on the market to be electric vehicles. |
| 1:47.0 | But we just have to move, we have to move fast. |
| 1:52.0 | Is that realistic? |
| 1:53.0 | Is that realistic? I mean, it's a pretty ambitious goal to be sure. |
| 1:59.0 | Michael Holtz reports for the Atlantic and other outlets. |
| 2:03.0 | He was watching this presser with some interest because he knows just how fragile the electric vehicle supply chain really is. |
| 2:11.0 | Like those batteries Biden was talking about, it's not just that many car companies aren't assembling them here in the US. |
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