The Scramble for Rare Earths - 2. The Hidden Paradox
Seriously...
BBC
4.1 • 885 Ratings
🗓️ 30 September 2022
⏱️ 15 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Misha Glenny explores the world of rare earth metals. Reducing CO2 emissions requires critical raw materials like lithium, cobalt and nickel but mining and processing them can pose a serious threat to the environment. Can we solve the paradox?
Guests: Dr Julie Klinger, Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography and Spatial Sciences at the University of Delaware and author of Rare Earth Frontiers: From Terrestrial Subsoils to Lunar Landscapes Teresa Ponce De Leao, chief executive of the Portuguese National Laboratory of Energy and Geology Henry Sanderson, author of Volt Rush Guillaume Pitron author of Rare Metals War
Producer: Ben Carter Editor: Hugh Levinson Sound engineer: James Beard Production coordinator: Janet Staples
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This was an impregnable fortress. The only way you get out was in a wooden box. |
| 0:05.0 | The controversial maximum security prison impossible to escape from. |
| 0:09.0 | And one of the duties of a political prisoner is the escape. |
| 0:12.0 | The IRA inmates who found a way. of a political prisoner is the escape. |
| 0:12.5 | The IRA inmates who found a way. |
| 0:14.5 | I'm Carlo Gableer and I'll be navigating a path |
| 0:19.5 | through the disturbing inside story of the biggest jailbreak in British and Irish history. |
| 0:25.0 | The narrative that they want is that this is a big achievement by them. |
| 0:28.5 | Escape from the maze, listen first on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:35.0 | BBC Sounds. BBC Sounds, Music Radio Podcasts. |
| 0:39.0 | Hello, I'm Ben Carter and welcome to Seriously from BBC Radio 4. I'm the producer of The Scramble for Rare Earths. |
| 0:48.0 | In this five-part series, Meisha Glenny finds out why the battle for a small group of metals and critical raw materials |
| 0:55.3 | is central to rising geopolitical tensions around the world. |
| 0:59.7 | In this second episode, we hear how reducing CO2 emissions requires critical raw materials like lithium, |
| 1:06.4 | cobalt and nickel, but mining and processing them can harm the environment. The village of Barossu lies in one of northern Portugal's most isolated areas, |
| 1:22.0 | which unsurprisingly means it's normally pretty quiet but last month a series |
| 1:28.0 | of protests broke out the song you can hear is one of resistance. |
| 1:33.0 | So what turns this sleepy village in northern Portugal |
| 1:42.0 | into the focus of increasingly angry protests. |
| 1:47.0 | Well, Barroso is sitting on vast reserves of something which the mining industry badly wants. |
| 1:55.0 | Not gold, not diamonds, not even oil. |
| 1:59.0 | The miners are looking for the lightest metal on earth. |
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