Richard Herrington: Head of the Earth Sciences Department at the Natural History Museum, London

Richard Herrington, head of the Earth Sciences Department at the Natural History Museum in London, has spent his career in mining and mineralogy. In this episode, he explains why electric vehicles and other alternative-energy technologies are “resource hungry,” the enormous volumes of minerals like copper, lithium, dysprosium, and neodymium that will be needed to move from the global economy from “carbon to minerals and metals,” China’s dominance of the critical minerals market, and why societies will have to make hard choices about where and how to mine the metals needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.