The pursuit of the world’s most important rocks is a story of Treasure and Technology, where the minerals found deep in the ground are used to build the phones and computers that store all our data. These special minerals are called rare earth elements, and they are like the Secret Ingredients needed to make powerful magnets and batteries that do not overheat when they are working hard. Even though they are called “rare,” they are actually found in many places, but it is very difficult and messy to pull them out of the dirt and separate them from each other. Because our world needs so much energy to keep the internet running, the countries that have the most of these minerals have become the most powerful players on the planet. China is currently the world leader because it has the most minerals and the best factories to clean them, while other countries like Vietnam, Brazil, Russia, and India are also sitting on huge piles of these valuable rocks. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Extraction
Minerals and Modern-Day Mining
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The global apparatus of human industry is shifting its weight from the deep, dark carbon deposits of the Carboniferous era to the crystalline lattices of the silicon age.
For two centuries, the primary kinetic driver of civilization was the extraction of ancient sunlight trapped in fossil fuels. This was a process of combustion where coal, oil, and gas were pulled from the earth to be burned, vanishing into the atmosphere as energy and exhaust. This was the era of volume and thermal power.
Sugar slaves and the Silver ghosts of Potosí
The history of South America is a sprawling ledger of appetites, where the continent’s geography has been treated less as a sovereign home and more as a biological vending machine for the North. At the macro level, we see a global economy built on the assumption of an infinite southern supply; at the micro level, we find that every American convenience—from the morning coffee to the smartphone battery—is a needle drawing life from a landscape that is never allowed to heal. This is the chronicle of a continent forced to provide the world’s luxury and its medicine, its energy and its vice, while the people tilling the soil remain tethered to a poverty that is manufactured in the boardrooms of the North. Continue reading