Promise and Peril at the Bottom of the Sea

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.

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.

Guest: Eric Lipton, an investigative reporter for The New York Times.

Background reading:

• Mining in the Pacific Ocean was meant to benefit poorer countries, but an international agency gave a Canadian company access to seabed sites.
• Miles below the surface, harvesting metallic nodules may threaten animals found nowhere else on the planet.
• Here are some of the seabed authority emails and other documents The Times assembled as it worked on its investigation of seabed mining.

For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.