Vince Beiser
Power Metal: The Achilles’ Heel of Digital Technology
Note: Doors for this event open at 6:30 PM.
Town Hall events are approximately 75 minutes long.
Power Metal: The Race for the Resources That Will Shape the Future
Third Place Books
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An Australian millionaire’s plan to mine the ocean floor. Nigerian garbage pickers risking their lives to salvage e-waste. A Bill Gates-backed entrepreneur harnessing AI to find metals in the Arctic.
These people and millions more are part of the intensifying competition to find and extract the minerals essential for two crucial technologies: the internet and renewable energy. In Power Metal, Vince Beiser explores the Achilles’ heel of “green power” and digital technology – that manufacturing computers, cell phones, electric cars, and other technologies demand skyrocketing amounts of lithium, copper, cobalt, and other materials. Around the world, businesses and governments are scrambling for new places and new ways to get those metals, at enormous cost to people and the planet.
Beiser crisscrossed the world to talk to the people involved and report on the damage this race is inflicting, the ways it could get worse, and how we can minimize the damage. Power Metal is a compelling glimpse into this disturbing yet potentially promising new world.
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Vince Beiser is an award-winning journalist and author. His first book, The World in a Grain, was a finalist for the PEN / E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award and a California Book Award. His work has appeared in Wired, Harper’s Magazine, The Atlantic, and The New York Times, among other publications. He lives with his family in Vancouver, British Columbia. Follow his newsletter at powermetal.substack.com.
Presented by Town Hall Seattle.