In the twentieth century wealth and power was dictated by access to oil. This century will
have different kingmakers perhaps different wars. 'A remarkably hopeful and useful book...The
climate crisis leaves us no choice but to build a new world and as Sanderson makes clear we
are capable of making it a better one than the dirty and dangerous planet we’ve come to take
for granted.' Bill McKibben Observer book of the week We depend on a handful of metals and
rare earths to power our phones and computers. Increasingly we rely on them to power our cars
and our homes. Whoever controls these finite commodities will become rich beyond imagining.
Sanderson journeys to meet the characters companies and nations scrambling for the new
resources linking remote mines in the Congo and Chile’s Atacama Desert to giant Chinese
battery factories shadowy commodity traders secretive billionaires a new generation of
scientists attempting to solve the dilemma of a ‘greener’ world.
