Summary of Guillaume Pitron's The Rare Metals War

By IRB Media

Get the Summary of Guillaume Pitron's The Rare Metals War: the dark side of clean energy and digital technologies in 20 minutes. Please note: This is a summary & not the original book.Original book introduction: The green-tech revolution has been lauded as the silver bullet to a new world. One that is at last free of oil, pollution, shortages, and cross-border tensions. Drawing on six years of research across a dozen countries, this book cuts across conventional green thinking to probe the hidden, dark side of green technology.

By breaking free of fossil fuels, we are in fact setting ourselves up for a new dependence — on rare metals such as cobalt, gold, and palladium. They are essential to electric vehicles, wind turbines, solar panels, our smartphones, computers, tablets, and other everyday connected objects. China has captured the lion’s share of the rare metals industry, but consumers know very little about how they are mined and traded, or their environmental, economic, and geopolitical costs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Nov 19, 2021
• ISBN: 9781638157144

IRB Media

With IRB books, you can get the key takeaways and analysis of a book in 15 minutes. We read every chapter, identify the key takeaways and analyze them for your convenience.

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Insights on Guillaume Pitron's The Rare Metals War

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 7

Insights from Chapter 8

Insights from Chapter 9

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The author visited the massive illegal quarrying site that was polluting the water supply of Ganzhou, China.

#2

Some rare metals, such as iron, copper, and zinc, are abundant in the Earth's crust. However, rare metals such as neodymium and other light rare-earth metals are abundant in extremely low quantities, and are therefore highly prized.

#3

Magnets are an important part of the world’s economy, and without rare metals like neodymium, our modern conveniences like motorbikes, trains, electric toothbrushes, and mobile phones would not exist.

#4

The energy transition is not just helping us solve the climate change problem, but it is also creating a wealth of new green technologies that we