Excerpts and Op-Eds
Power Metal
The Green Economy Is Hungry for Copper—and People Are Stealing, Fighting, and Dying to Feed It, Wired
A $60 Billion-a-Year Climate Solution Is Sitting in Our Junk Drawers, Mother Jones
The True Cost of Black Friday, TIME
The problem with recycling: no silver bullet to the critical-metal supply conundrum, The Globe and Mail
These Algorithms Are Hunting for an EV Battery Mother Lode, Wired
Clean Power at a Steep Price, Sierra
The World in a Grain
The World’s Disappearing Sand, New York Times
Sand is the essential ingredient that makes modern life possible. And we are starting to run out.
The Deadly Global War for Sand, Wired
Battles sparked by sand mining have reportedly killed hundreds in recent years—including police officers, government officials, and ordinary people.
Sand mining: the global environmental crisis you’ve probably never heard of, The Guardian
From Cambodia to California, industrial-scale sand mining is causing wildlife to die, local trade to wither and bridges to collapse. And booming urbanisation means the demand for this increasingly valuable resource is unlikely to let up.
He who controls the sand: the mining ‘mafias’ killing each other to build cities, The Guardian
Rapid urbanisation has made an ordinary commodity suddenly precious: sand.As cities continue to voraciously need concrete, glass and asphalt, illegal sand mining has sparked a global wave of gang violence
Is Shanghai’s Appetite for Sand Killing China’s Biggest Lake? New Security Beat
The Ultra-Pure, Super-Secret Sand That Makes Your Phone Possible, Wired
The processor that makes your laptop or cell phone work was fabricated using quartz from this obscure Appalachian backwater.
Why the world is running out of sand, BBC
Feeling the Heat? Blame Concrete, TIME
How the Owens Bottle Company Helped End American Child Labor, Pacific Standard
Why something as seemingly minute as sand is as critical to modern life as cells are to the human body, National Post
Sand mining threatens ways of life, from Cambodia to Nigeria, National Geographic
Aboard the giant sand-sucking ships that China uses to reshape the world, MIT Technology Review
