Lithium for batteries being extracted in the Atacama desert, Chile
John Moore/Getty Images
Power Metal
Vince Beiser (Wildfire Books (UK, 20 November); Riverhead Books, (US, 19 November))
The smartphone on which you are probably reading this article takes a heavy toll on the planet. If it is an iPhone, over 30 kilograms of ore had to be mined to harvest the metals within it, from the nickel and cobalt in its battery to the rare earths in its touch screen.
Even larger volumes of such “critical metals”…
