Promise and Peril at the Bottom of the Sea

<p>The adoption of electric cars has been hailed as an important step in curbing the use of fossil fuels and fighting climate change. There is a snag, however: such vehicles require around six times as many metals as their gasoline-powered counterparts.</p><p>A giant storehouse of the necessary resources sits at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. But retrieving them may, in turn, badly damage the environment.</p><p>Guest: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/by/eric-lipton?smid=pc-thedaily">Eric Lipton</a>, an investigative reporter for The New York Times.</p><p>Background reading: </p><ul><li>Mining in the Pacific Ocean was meant to benefit poorer countries, but an international agency<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/29/world/deep-sea-mining.html"> gave a Canadian company access</a> to seabed sites.</li><li>Miles below the surface, harvesting metallic nodules may<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/08/29/world/deep-sea-riches-mining-nodules.html"> threaten animals found nowhere else on the planet</a>.</li><li>Here are some of the <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/22266044-seabed-mining-selected-documents-2022" target="_blank">seabed authority emails and other documents</a> The Times assembled as it worked on its investigation of seabed mining.</li></ul><p>For more information on today’s episode, visit <a href="http://nytimes.com/thedaily?smid=pc-thedaily">nytimes.com/thedaily</a>. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. </p>