Power Metal

August 15, 2024
A disturbing study of the high cost of the secret machinery embedded in our myriad digital devices. It is easy to think of electric vehicles, green energy, and other advanced technology as surefire ways to save the planet, but award-winning journalist Beiser, author ofThe World in a Grain, advises us to look at the issues more deeply to assess the true costs. The author focuses on the metals required to power new-gen tech, which include huge amounts of copper and nickel as well as cobalt, boron, lithium, and less familiar substances like gallium and germanium. These elements are necessary for batteries and chips that support everything from EVs and smartphones to wind turbines and solar panels. A critical problem is that mining and refining these metals can, if not done carefully, create horrifying environmental and humanitarian problems. The key players in the global business are China and Russia, which deliberately chose to accept the damage in order to cut costs and corner the market. Both countries have shown themselves willing to leverage their positions for geopolitical advantage. Other countries have acknowledged the danger and are trying to catch up in the marketplace, but there is a long way to go. Beiser also investigates the global market in scrap, noting that the recycling of the metals in tech devices is useful but often exploitative to laborers. The U.S. has huge mineral resources, but to develop them without damaging the environment would be expensive. Beiser argues that the higher costs must be borne and that the cheap ride enjoyed so far is not really so cheap. This is a message that many people might not want to hear, but the author underlines the point that there is no real alternative. Beiser's research is alarming and his evidence sobering, but his well-informed conclusions are difficult to deny.

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June 1, 2024

Award-winning journalist and author Beiser (The World in a Grain) explores the increasing demand for the rare elements, such as lithium and cobalt, that power modern-day technology, from the internet and cell phones to electric cars and solar panels. Finding and mining these metals and minerals is increasingly challenging, even as their use becomes ever more essential. Prepub Alert.

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September 9, 2024
The insatiable demand for metals used in digital technology, electric vehicles, and renewable energy infrastructure is harming the environment and destroying lives, according to this striking report. Journalist Beiser (The World in a Grain) explains that toxic byproducts from rare earth metal mines in Baotou, China, have “sown skeletal deformities and cancers” among the region’s residents, and that Western countries are so desperate for Russia’s nickel reserves they’ve exempted the material from sanctions, effectively helping to fund Russia’s war in Ukraine. Recycling metal is more environmentally friendly than mining, but “also far more difficult, dirty, and dangerous than most people realize,” Beiser contends, describing the horrific conditions in a Lagos dump where thousands of workers earning only a few dollars per day toil amid “highly toxic dioxins” without safety gear while harvesting valuable metal from discarded electronics. Beiser’s main solution is to reduce the need for cars—both gas and electric—by reconfiguring American cities around bicycle lanes and public transport lines, a proposal that feels at once ambitious and yet too narrowly focused to address the role countless other products play in driving the metal market. Still, he does an impressive job of showing how going electric isn’t a silver bullet for stopping climate change. This is sure to spark debate. Agent: Lisa Bankoff, Bankoff Collaborative.

October 1, 2024
Just as he conveyed the importance of a critical yet often overlooked commodity in The World in a Grain: The Story of Sand and How It Transformed Civilization (2018), so journalist Beiser enumerates the precious metals comprising the electronics we consume with near-thoughtless abandon, from our laptops to our phones to our automobiles. Mining of these metals--copper, nickel, cobalt, lithium--pollutes mine sites and the communities nearby, depletes and debases water tables, exacts terrible physical and emotional tolls on miners, and governs global politics--China and Russia, holding huge reserves of precious metals, wield outsize political power. And now massive machines are poised to scrape billions of tons of valuable polymetallic rocks from the ocean floor with unpredictable consequences. Beiser counters the darkness with bright stories of entrepreneurs salvaging the metals, giving old batteries repurposed afterlives, and repairing electronic devices to extend their lives. He urges the changeover from the automobile to the bicycle, which has already effectively happened in Amsterdam and other cities. A book that alarms even as it leads us to solutions.

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November 2, 2024

Award-winning journalist Beiser (The World in a Grain: The Story of Sand and How It Transformed Civilization) brings the issue of critical materials supply into focus by visiting some global hotspots for raw materials. They include brine pools in Chile's Atacama Desert, electronic-device teardowns in Lagos, Nigeria, and a battery-recycling plant in Kingston, Ontario. Beiser reports also on a guerilla metal salvage from industrial dumpsters in Vancouver, and he investigates a planned ocean-floor mineral-extraction that will use robotic submarines. These resources are meant to help meet energy and technology needs. Aluminum, copper, lithium, nickel, and rare earth elements are essential ingredients, but most people, Beiser says, are unaware of how much of those materials go into electronics. For example, the book notes that it takes 75 pounds of ore to make one iPhone. Beiser argues that digging up and processing ore is brutal on both miners and the environment (and the people who live in surrounding areas), and that trashing or crude disassembly of discarded electronic products is enormously wasteful. He asserts that, in some places, it can also precipitate child labor, robbery, enslavement, and sometimes even murder. VERDICT This insightful book is filled with hard-hitting arguments. Beiser successfully makes the case that society can't mine and recycle its way to sustainability; instead, humans must consume less.--David R. Conn

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