COP26: Can you dig it? All about mining feat. Dr. Richard Herrington

In this episode, I was joined live in the New York Times Climate Hub at COP26 by Dr. Richard Herrington, an academic geologist and Head of Earth Sciences at the Natural History Museum in London, to dig deep on the topic of mining. Mining underpins nearly everything in our modern lives. Essentially, if we didn't grow it, we mined it. Yet in terms of public visibility, mining is perhaps even more hidden from view than agriculture in rich nations. Dr. Herrington offers a brief history of materials use, from a time when we used only a few minerals to the present, where we regularly use many dozens of different elements in a single product due to their varied and unique properties. We discuss the environmental and human impacts of mining as well as important processing stages, which often have hard-to-avoid impacts, such as the inherent formation of carbon dioxide in concrete making and iron smelting. Among Dr. Herrington's research interests are more environmentally-benign industrial processes, such as using lower temperatures or microbes. We move onto geological topics relevant to the energy transition, touching briefly on Deep Geological Repository for used nuclear fuel before discussing Cobalt, Lithium, and the utter certainty that renewable technologies will lead to increases in mining and mineral requirements. Other topics include why much of the mining and processing for rare earth metals and electric motors takes place in China and, finally, prospects for deep sea mining.