Come to our 40-min forum to learn more about how metals needed for future development of digital technology and renewable energy are causing environmental havoc, and how we can do better.
What has my cell phone got to do with the environment?
Mining has always been important in the Canadian economy. Today, demand for both renewable energy technologies and digital technologies is fuelling increasingly greater demand for copper, zinc, cobalt, nickel, lithium minerals. As we shift away from coal, oil and gas, and enjoy modern conveniences such as smartphones, electric vehicles, and efficient appliances, we are hearing more about the need to increase mining of “rare earth metals”.
We know mining is costly in terms of the environment. Toxic tailings ponds, excessive water use, scarred landscapes, and massive amounts of energy required for operations, not to mention worker exploitation and pollution-related health problems are well documented.
Most of us, especially in cities, rarely think about mining, but its products surround us. In Power Metal: The Race for Resources that Will Shape the Future, Vince Beiser writes that, “Mobile phones can contain as many as two thirds of all the elements in the periodic table, including dozens of different metals.” To obtain copper alone, “Seventy-five pounds of ore have to be wrested out of the earth to build a single four-and-a-half-ounce iPhone.”
Vince Beiser is an award-winning journalist and author who, fortunately for us, lives in Vancouver. His latest book, Power Metal: The Race for the Resources That Will Shape the Future is an investigation into how the materials we need for digital technology and renewable energy are causing environmental havoc, mayhem and murder, and how we can do better. Vince has reported from over 100 countries, states, provinces, kingdoms, occupied territories, no man’s lands and disaster zones. He has exposed conditions in California’s harshest prisons, trained with US Army soldiers, ridden with the first responders to natural disasters, and hunted down other stories from around the world for publications including Wired, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Mother Jones, The Economist, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times. His work has been honored by many institutions, and he has shared in winning three National Magazine Awards and an Emmy. Vince’s first book, The World in a Grain: The Story of Sand and How It Transformed Civilization was a finalist for a PEN America award and a California Book Award, and spawned a TEDx talk.
Keep up with Vince’s work via his newsletter, Power Metal