The world is engaged in a scramble for strategic minerals, including rare earth elements. New mines are being proposed and new trade deals negotiated, alongside dire predictions of future shortages of key mineral inputs in manufacturing, the energy transition, and military production.

But what if the solution to this crisis is hiding in plain sight? Can much of current and even future demand be met by more efficient extraction and processing techniques? And what do the latest advances in technology mean for the construction of a more robust circular economy?

Join three experts for a conversation about resource scarcity, environmental sustainability, and mineral self-sufficiency. Elizabeth Holley is an exploration and mining geologist and an associate professor in the Mining Engineering department at Colorado School of Mines. Julie Michelle Klinger is a geographer, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and the author of Rare Earth Frontiers: From Terrestrial Subsoils to Lunar Landscapes. Alicia Valero is a chemical engineer who works in the fields of industrial ecology and resource efficiency at Energaia.

Sponsored by the Rare Earth Elements Group, Global Just Transition, Institute for Policy Studies