LMN is delighted to announce our first Resisting Mining Book Club of 2025 with guest speaker Christopher Pollon, who will be speaking about his book Pitfall: The Race to Mine the World’s Most Vulnerable Places (Greystone Books, 2023). Register via link below!
About the book:
A harrowing journey through the past, present, and future of mining, this expertly-researched account ends on a vision for how industry can better serve the needs of humanity.
A race is on to exploit the last bonanzas of gold, silver, and industrial metals left on Earth. These metals are not only essential for all material comfort and need, but for the transition to clean energy: in the coming decades, billions of tons of copper, nickel, silver, and other metals will be required to build electric vehicles, solar and wind installations, and green infrastructure. We need more metals than ever before, yet the qualities and quantities are diminishing, making the extraction process more polluting to land, air and water. And most of these metals will be mined from the global south, where social conflict will only grow, led by Indigenous peoples demanding a greater say in how their wealth is used.
Beginning with the first waves of big, foreign-owned mines in the 1960s, investigative journalist Christopher Pollon shows how transnational companies rose to dominate copper, precious metals, and lithium in Latin America, made inroads into war-torn countries in Africa, and exploited nickel, industrial metals, and rare earth metals across Asia and Oceania.
If we cannot change our course, Pollon argues, we are condemned to mine deeper and darker places, including the depths of the ocean, sacrifice zones, and near-earth asteroids. This disturbing vision of the future also includes robotic mines without workers and social license-unless we act now.
Christopher will give an introductory lecture which will be followed by a Q&A. You do not need to have read the book to attend this meeting. However, if you want to purchase a copy or read an extract, all registered attendees will be sent a discount code and materials.
About the author:
Christopher Pollon is an award-winning Canadian freelance journalist and author focused on environment, business and the politics of natural resources. Covering a global beat of oceans, energy and mining, his writing has been published by National Geographic, The Guardian, The Walrus, Mother Jones, The Globe and Mail, and many more. He is a contributing editor at The Tyee, which is based in his home town of Vancouver, British Columbia. He is the author of two books, including “Pitfall” (2023) – and “The Peace in Peril: the Real Cost of the Site C Dam” (2017).
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