In the twentieth century, wealth and power was dictated by access to oil. This century will have different kingmakers, perhaps different wars.
We depend on a handful of metals and rare earths to power our phones and computers. Increasingly, we rely on them to power our cars and our homes. Whoever controls these finite commodities will become rich beyond imagining.
Sanderson journeys to meet the characters, companies, and nations scrambling for the new resources, linking remote mines in the Congo and Chile's Atacama Desert to giant Chinese battery factories, shadowy commodity traders, secretive billionaires, a new generation of scientists attempting to solve the dilemma of a ‘greener' world.
‘A remarkably hopeful and useful book...The climate crisis leaves us no choice but to build a new world and as Sanderson makes clear, we are capable of making it a better one than the dirty and dangerous planet we’ve come to take for granted.' Bill McKibben, Observer book of the week. READ REVIEW.
‘Sanderson deftly guides us through the convolutions of which company bought what from which, and he livens up that potentially desiccated subject matter with an eye for characterful detail… Despite the seemingly insuperable geopolitical quandaries with which it deals, the tone of Sanderson’s book is one of cautious optimism,’ The Times. READ REVIEW.
‘The urgency of a green transition means the world faces new power struggles over access to scarce metals and minerals. Sanderson carefully walks us through the minefields that are the world's finite supplies of lithium, cobalt and nickel and reveals with startling immediacy the Machiavellian machinations for control over these precious resources. A riveting guide to our perilous future.’
Ann Pettifor, author of The Case for the Green New Deal
