In the past year, over one millions electric cars were bought worldwide, and in Australia, electric car sales rose by more than 4,000 percent compared to 2011 sales. The demand is steadily increasing for the mining of raw materials to power the electric car revolution, but the mining of rare earth materials can have damaging effects on the environment. To give us more information on the issue, we were joined on the Daily by Associate Professor of Earth and Environmental Science, Carl Spandler.