The New Yorker Radio Hour
One Environmental Journalist Thinks that the U.S. Needs More Mining
Tue, 14 Jan 2025
Donald Trump loves mining, and he would like to expand that effort in the U.S. At least one environmentalist agrees with him, to some extent: the journalist Vince Beiser. Beiser’s recent book is called “Power Metal,” and it’s about the rare-earth metals that power almost every electronic device and sustainable technology we use today. “A lot of people really hate it when I say this, a lot of environmentally minded folks, but I do believe we should be open to allowing more mining to happen in the United States,” he tells Elizabeth Kolbert, herself an environmental journalist of great renown. “Mining is inherently destructive, there’s no getting around it, but . . . we have absolutely got to get our hands on more of these metals in order to pull off the energy transition. There’s just no way to build all the E.V.s and solar panels and all the rest of it without some amount of mining.” At least in the U.S. or Canada, Beiser says, there are higher standards of safety than in many other countries.
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This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Given how much Donald Trump says he loves mining, you would think the blood of every environmentalist in the world is now running cold. One possible exception may be the journalist Vince Beiser.
Beiser's recent book is called Power Metal, and it's about what's called rare earth metals, elements you've possibly never heard of but that power every device you own. Vince Beiser spoke with The New Yorker's Elizabeth Colbert, herself an environmental journalist of great renown and a winner of the Pulitzer Prize.
Vince, you've written that to make that iPhone in your pocket, 75 pounds of ore had to be pulled up, crushed, and smelted, which is kind of an astonishing figure. And you also note that a cell phone can contain as many as two-thirds of the elements on the periodic table. Can you pick maybe one of the more obscure elements in there and trace its journey for us?
Sure. One of my favorite super obscure metals in your phone is probably europium. There are tiny, tiny amounts of europium in your cell phone screen that make it capable of showing the color red. So what in the world is europium? Europium is one of 17 metals, this basket of metals that are called rare earth metals. There's 17 of them. They're all like down in this corner in the periodic table.
They've all got weird names. And all of them are incredibly important for renewable energy across the board, for electric vehicles, in addition to our cell phones and pretty much all of our consumer electronics. The thing to know about rare earths, about europium and these other rare earths, is that almost all of them, one way or another, come through China.
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