Fossil fuels are terrible for the environment. Is mining critical minerals any better?

Get the Full StoryIn short, yes. But we have to actively work to avoid repeating the abuses of mining for coal and other fossil fuels.

As renewable energy gathers steam around the world, the harms of mining its mineral components continue to grow. On the environmental front, for example, there s the destruction of Indonesian rainforests to mine nickel and the draining of precious South American groundwater reserves to obtain lithium. There s also the human toll, which can be seen in forced displacement and child labor exploitation in the cobalt-rich Democratic Republic of the Congo, as well as violence toward Indigenous people living on nickel-studded lands in the Philippines.

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