A journalist probes tensions surrounding two minerals that are key to green technologies

The mineral anatomy of technology has become a fascination for scholars and journalists alike in recent years. Popular writings on the topic have also gained traction because of a rise in “resource nationalism” surrounding mining practices for metals critical for both defense purposes and green technologies. Adding to this canon, journalist Ernest Scheyder’s The War Below presents a fine-grained account of the environmental and social conflicts that permeate the landscape where two key minerals for the green energy transition—copper and lithium—are found. [For those interested, journalist Henry Sanderson’s recent book Volt Rush includes two additional minerals—cobalt and nickel—in its coverage (1).]

Scheyder’s choice of copper and lithium for his deep-dive analysis is partially determined by the field ethnography that he aims to provide of his travels to mining projects within the United States. These materials are at the forefront of critical mineral conflicts in the US. Although he also includes coverage of international projects, such as the Uyuni lithium fields of Bolivia, Scheyder’s storyline most acutely reveals the fault lines and contradictions of American critical minerals policy.

The book begins in the 1980s, with the discovery of a distinctive plant species in the Nevada wilderness—Eriogonum tiehmii, commonly known as Tiehm’s buckwheat. He interviews the discoverer of the species, botanist Jerry Tiehm, for the prologue of the book to understand the salience of such emblems of biodiversity. Four decades later, the species’ habitat is the battleground for the development of one of the United States’ most lucrative lithium deposits, and Tiehm’s buckwheat has become a saber for environmentalists and Native Americans in the fight against mining development.

In many ways, the past 40 years have been the most consequential period in the development of complex mineral supply chains for the transition to green energy technologies. We have come to understand the urgency of climate change during this period and to appreciate the need to find new means of energizing human civilization. Yet, as biologist Barry Commoner warned in one of his “laws of ecology,” “there is no such thing as a free lunch” in the Universe (2). The War Below successfully depicts why this aphorism is so apt for thinking about mineral resources. Even with recycling and circular economies, we must have enough stocks of metals to recycle. With lithium, which is flammable, there is also the challenge of transporting concentrated used material over long distances...