And iron is indeed everywhere. It courses through our bodies in our red blood cells. It is the main element in the planet’s core and the second most abundant metal in the earth’s crust (at 5 per cent, after aluminium which is 8 per cent). Just look at a ranking of the substances we dig, blast and pump out of the planet’s surface each year. Sand and gravel: 43 billion tonnes; oil and gas: 8.1 billion tonnes; coal: 7.7 billion tonnes; iron ore: 3.1 billion tonnes. And like pretty much all of those materials, our appetite for this metal shows no sign of abating: after a dip in 2020 during the
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