The one-sentence summary

Six crucial materials built our world (sand, salt, iron, copper, oil and lithium) and they will transform our future.

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WHAT THE BOOK SAYS

  • This is a substantial story about our past and future which takes us from the Dark Ages to the present and looks beyond. In one way or another, the six materials power our computers and phones, build our homes and offices, and create life-saving medicines. But most of us take these six crucial materials for granted.
  • The author travels the globe to uncover a world we rarely see or indeed think about. These substances matter more than ever before and the hidden battle to control them will shape our geopolitical future.
  • It is interesting how little we understand about how everyday products are actually made and, because of the complexity, no single human being could carry out or direct the numerous processes involved. The reason for choosing these six materials is that it is hard to imagine civilization without them because they are the hardest to replace.
  • In 2019, just one year, we mined, dug and blasted more materials from the earth’s surface than the sum total of everything we extracted from the dawn of humanity all the way through to 1950.
  • The amount of sand, soil and rock we mine, quarry and dredge each year is 24 times greater than the amount of sediment moved by Earth’s natural erosive processes, so humans are a bigger geological force than nature itself.
  • Fossil fuels are needed to manufacture practically every green energy solution, so the key to using fossil fuels in the future is to build with them, not burn them.

THE SIX MATERIALS

  • Sand is both the most ancient and most modern substance of all – the fabric for much of the world. Our transformation of silicon into beads, cups and jewellery marked the beginning of the era of Homo faber – man the manufacturer – and yet now it is used to create smartphones and smart weaponry. Sand makes glass which enables us to make leaps of imagination, such as transmit information through the internet and make the brains of the most advanced computers. Copper wire can only carry a limited amount of information at a limited speed – a problem solved by optical fibre. Sand creates concrete, which has enhanced lives and lifted millions from poverty because it is cheap and it is everywhere. But there are now 80 tonnes of concrete for everyone alive – more than the combined weight of every living thing on the planet. Tiny pieces of silicon chipped off a circular wafer – hence ‘chips’- allows you to produce a computer made of semiconductors. No product is more central to international trade than semiconductors – it is greater than Saudi Arabia’s total revenue from oil and the entire global trade in aircraft.
  • Salt is the magic ingredient that helps us to transform our world. It is needed by the human body to keep functioning – several kilograms of it a year. It helps our machinery of nerves, muscles and tendons to operate, which is why our history and present are infused with it. There are three ways to make salt: evaporate it from the sea, dig rock salt out of the ground, or extract it from the ground in the form of brine. Brine is a saline solution that is more than 30 percent salt, compared to 3% for seawater. Solution mining is the main way we get salt these days, using pressurized hoses rather than drills or dynamite.
  • Iron is what enables us to do things through the creation of tools, construction materials, transport, and of course weapons. Iron and steel constitute nearly all the metals in the world (steel is an alloy of iron and carbon). If you live in a developed economy, you have roughly 15 tonnes of steel in your life – cars, homes, hospitals and schools on which you rely, and so on. Iron is everywhere, including our red blood cells and the planet’s core, and is the second most abundant metal in the earth’s crust at 5% (aluminium is 8%). Possibly the most obscure steel is called low-background steel, which is so uncontaminated with radionuclides – a type of nuclear energy – that it is essential for sensitive equipment like Geiger counters and some medical devices. The only way of finding it is through sources that date back to before 1954 when the first nuclear tests took place. Old sunken battleships are a popular source. Steel is easily recycled, so eventually we might not need to mine any more. If the mills that recycle it were run on renewable energy, this really would be green steel.
  • Copper is civilization’s nervous system, the circuitry and cables we never see but couldn’t function without. Electrical currents begin in copper and is transported in copper to devices whose veins are lined with copper, but it is mostly hidden behind wire sheathing or inside inaccessible infrastructure. The first copper age led to bronze and brass, and the second to electricity. Between 2020 and 2050 the share of our primary energy coming from electricity is forecast to rise from 20% to 50%, making it the backbone of almost everything. The average car contains about a mile of copper wire, and electric vehicles need three to four times that.
  • Oil is pumped from the ground and in doing so breaks a geological cycle that goes back over 100 million years. Oil and gas are both useful and destructive. Oil is sometimes called the everything thing, because its derivatives play a disproportionate role in our lives – plastics, fertilizers, packaging, clothes, pharmaceuticals. Even a tomato is the fruit of fossil fuels, grown in a greenhouse using fertilizers and natural gas heating. Polyethylene, often called polythene, is the most widely used plastic in the world. But if we do eventually escape from our reliance on oil, this black gold will be replaced by a powdery white gold – lithium.
  • Lithium comes from briny water under enormous salt lakes that can be 3 miles thick. It holds the key to the storage ability of batteries in mobiles, laptops and electric cars. End-of-life recycling rates for materials vary hugely – steel 70-90%, aluminium 40-70%, cobalt 68%, and copper 43-53%, but lithium is less than 1%. It is predicted that by 2030 the old minerals from batteries might provide a tenth of demand. This recycling is sometimes called The cost of lithium-ion batteries has fallen from $7,500 in 1991 to $181 in 2028 – a 97% decline.

WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH

  • This is a long and fascinating book. It takes time to delve deep into the technicalities, but it is worth it.