![]() The most recent study, for instance, shows that 8.7 million people a year, most of them poor, die from breathing the particulates and other combustion byproducts of coal, oil and gas – that’s one death in five on this planet, more than HIV/Aids, malaria, tuberculosis, war and terrorism combined.Īnd that’s before one calculates the pain from the climate change these same fuels are now causing – the toll from floods, fires, droughts, disease and displacement. To be clear (which Sanderson is really not), even if the worst abuses were 10 times more frequent than alleged, they would not come close to matching the damage from fossil fuels that batteries, solar panels and wind turbines could replace. The most recent study shows that 8.7 million people a year, most of them poor, die from breathing the particulates and other byproducts of coal, oil and gas Indeed, understanding of these kinds of threats has penetrated deeply enough that it’s become a favourite trope of the fossil-fuel industry I was debating recently with a former Republican congressman who was indignant about African child labour in the mineral supply chain. These defects are fairly well known at this point: the underside of, say, “artisanal” Congolese cobalt mining has been widely reported and the Ukraine war, which happened too recently to be reflected in Sanderson’s account, has underlined Moscow’s control of some critical materials, such as nickel. And indeed his in-depth reporting – stronger on corporate histories than on-the-ground interviewing – shows the corruption that underlies many of the mining schemes for the minerals used in batteries, the human rights abuses and environmental troubles that can come from that mining and the geopolitical complications that emerge when countries such as China and Russia control crucial parts of the trade. The longtime commodities and mining reporter for the Financial Times, Sanderson may well have sold this book on the idea that “going green” was actually taking us in dark directions. My guess is that was not his original plan. H enry Sanderson has written a remarkably hopeful and useful book. ![]()
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