cobalt mine in Idaho’s Salmon River Mountains,

northern Nevada, where his group has joined a lawsuit against a proposed open-pit lithium mine in Thacker Pass

70% of cobalt comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo, where an estimated 40,000 children as young as 6 work in dangerous mines.

Tribes, landowners and communities find themselves wrestling with the not-so-green side of green energy.

The IEA says meeting the Paris Climate Accord goals for decarbonization will require even more — far more — minerals: as much as four to six times present amounts.

while EVs are cleaner than gas cars in the long run, they still carry environmental and human-rights baggage, especially associated with mining.

double global mineral demand over the next two decades, according to the International Energy Agency

manufacturing EVs requires about six times more minerals than traditional cars.

Bauxite is the main source of the rare metal gallium

Despite their name, rare-earth elements are – with the exception of the radioactive promethium – relatively plentiful in Earth's crust, with cerium being the 25th most abundant element at 68 parts per million, more abundant than copper. However, because of their geochemical properties, rare-earth elements are typically dispersed and not often found concentrated in rare-earth minerals; as a result economically exploitable ore deposits are less common.[4] The first rare-earth mineral discovered (1787) was gadolinite, a mineral composed of cerium, yttrium, iron, silicon, and other elements. This mineral was extracted from a mine in the village of Ytterby in Sweden; four of the rare-earth elements bear names derived from this single location.