The Rare Metals War: the dark side of clean energy and digital technologies
This internationally celebrated book pulls back the curtain on a troubling contradiction at the heart of our push for cleaner technology. We're swapping one dependency for another. While the shift away from fossil fuels promises a greener future, it quietly demands vast quantities of rare metals, including cobalt, gold, and palladium, whose supply is finite and shrinking. These obscure materials sit inside every electric vehicle, wind turbine, solar panel, smartphone, and laptop we own. Guillaume Pitron argues, convincingly, that most of us have no idea where these metals come from, how they're extracted, or what that extraction costs the planet. The environmental damage, geopolitical tensions, and economic pressures tied to rare metal mining remain largely invisible to the consumer. This book makes them visible. It's a sobering, well-researched read that challenges the assumption that clean energy is simply clean. Short, sharp chapters keep the pace moving, while the bigger picture builds steadily into something genuinely unsettling. If you care about the true price of the digital and green revolutions, this is essential reading.
- Author: Guillaume Pitron
- Publisher: Scribe UK
- Genre: Architecture
- ISBN: 978-1914484964
- Pages: 320 pages