Greetings,
At On Point we relish digging deeper into stories. It’s an opportunity that our format of one topic per hour uniquely offers in weekday programming. And that’s why I’m excited to start this newsletter with details about an upcoming series that is about digging deeper both figuratively and literally.

It’s inspired by the Biden administration’s push to tackle climate change by speeding up the transition away from fossil fuels to clean energy technologies. The Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law 18 months ago, boosted investment in the production of electric vehicles across the US. The Administration is also spending billions of dollars to boost domestic production of materials like lithium and nickel, essential components in the batteries that will power those EVs.

We are going to spend a week’s worth of shows telling the story of some of the minerals and elements essential to the production of those batteries and the motors that will power the clean energy future – where they come from, how we get them, how we use them, and of course the environmental and humanitarian challenges that come along with them.

Part One will tell the story of lithium. We’ll learn why the US has a quarter of the world’s lithium deposits but produces just 3% of the world’s supply, how all that could be about to change, and what that could mean for the community of Kings Mountain, North Carolina.

Part Two takes us to a copper mine in South Africa where we find out about the environmental devastation that mining has caused and what can be done to make mining less destructive.

In Part Three, we turn our attention to the Democratic Republic of Congo, which has more cobalt deposits than the rest of the word combined. Hundreds of thousands of people, including tens of thousands of children, work in these mines in what is effectively modern day slavery. We will hear first-hand from a mine-worker leading a grassroots movement to reform conditions.

Part Four takes us to Indonesia which now produces more than half of the world’s nickel and hopes to be the Saudi Arabia of the electric age, raising the living standards of tens of millions of its citizens. But can it escape China’s clutches?

The week wraps up by returning to the US to look at the challenges the US faces in boosting domestic mineral production and what it can do to break China’s dominance in the production of these battery-grade minerals.

We’re calling the series Elements of Energy: Mining for a Green Future. It will run the week of March 11, Monday through Friday. As you know these special series are a signature element of On Point’s programming and a demonstration of the editorial ambition we deliver for you and, most importantly, your listeners.

Before I sign off, as excited as I am to share our upcoming series plans with you, I can’t ignore the fact that this is 2024 and later this year there will be a hugely consequential election — one that may determine the future path of American democracy. Please know that we at On Point will waste no time horse-race tracking of who’s up or down each day. In our signature deep dive full-hour conversations On Point will explore the fragility of our democracy, the seen and unseen forces shaping that, and what is really at stake in this election. Expect to hear complexity and nuance.

More on that in my next newsletter. Thanks for reading this far!

Jonathan Dyer
Executive Producer, On Point