Material World: The Six Raw Materials That Shape Modern Civilization

by Ed Conway

The challenge here is that while developed nations already have about all the steel they need, they have nowhere near enough batteries to electrify the roads. Even on the basis of optimistic projections of mine discoveries and openings, the world will not have enough lithium to meet its needs by 2030. The firms exploiting the Salar de Atacama cannot accelerate the evaporation of their brine fast enough to provide all the lithium hydroxide the cathode producers and battery makers are demanding. And if they pushed to drain the salt lake faster, the Chilean authorities might ban them altogether.[6] We are heading, in short, for a bumpy few years. For decades we have convinced ourselves that the main constraint facing humanity is the scope of our imagination. We created an economic system so sophisticated and seamless that it allowed us to forget about the materials upon which it was built. But in attempting to build our way to net zero, we are confronting the inescapable limitations of thermodynamics and material constraints. There is a crucial distinction here, however. This time around we are building our way into the future. For centuries, humankind exploited energy commodities from the ground in order to burn them. Coal, oil and gas were extracted and then incinerated, releasing carbon along the way. This time, we are mining and refining lithium to seal into batteries that we can reuse and recycle. This step shift will not prevent us digging and blasting more than ever be...