“The Electro-Digital Age”: Sustainable Future or Environmental Nightmare?
In recent years, global competition has intensified over the extraction of essential minerals needed for two core technologies that will define humanity’s future: the internet and renewable energy. This race is set to create new industries and immense wealth—but it could also destabilize the global balance of power. The world faces a critical crossroads: either move toward a more sustainable future or plunge into an environmental nightmare.
In his book Power Metal, Vince Beiser explores the hidden weakness of “green energy” and digital technology. The production of computers, smartphones, electric cars, and other advanced technologies requires vast quantities of lithium, copper, cobalt, and other critical minerals. Beiser shows that the environmental consequences of the global competition for these materials can be just as destructive as carbon emissions—especially when mining is poorly regulated.
The extraction of these minerals also carries severe social costs in developing nations, where poor communities are often forced to work in unsafe and unhealthy conditions. Moreover, resource wealth can fund authoritarian regimes and violent insurgencies. Beiser raises a vital question: how can the minerals we rely on to power technology and energy lead simultaneously to environmental devastation, political instability, and rising violence—and how can this cycle be improved?
The Cost of the Electro-Digital Age
Beiser bluntly declares that “there is no such thing as clean energy.” While the transition away from fossil fuels is absolutely necessary, he emphasizes that digital technologies, electric vehicles, and renewable energy all depend on rare minerals whose extraction is highly polluting, energy-intensive, and environmentally costly.
This puts humanity in a dangerous paradox: while efforts to avoid climate catastrophe are essential, they may simultaneously create new disasters. To build a sustainable world powered by digital technologies and carbon-free energy, we need a completely new approach.
Beiser describes our current era as the Electro-Digital Age—a fusion of digital technology, the internet, renewable energy, and electric vehicles. Together, these forces have radically transformed human life, from work and communication to transportation and household energy use.
Digital technology has become deeply embedded in daily life, growing in importance faster than anyone predicted. The other two driving forces—renewable energy and electric vehicles—are advancing rapidly as well. The global shift from fossil fuels to renewables and EVs is crucial to tackling the climate crisis, but this “cure” comes with grave side effects: destruction of natural habitats, loss of rainforests, river and water pollution, child labor in mines, modern slavery practices, murders, and political unrest—mostly in poor or invisible regions of the world.
Thus, the Electro-Digital Age is far from cost-free. “Green” and “clean” solutions often depend on massive mineral extraction, placing the environmental and human burden on resource-producing nations. There is an inherent contradiction between saving the climate and the destructive consequences of the mining-dependent supply chains required to do so.
The Global Mineral Race
After World War II, the United States dominated global mining and metallurgy. Over time, however, this dominance waned as competitors—especially China—rose, and heavy industry shifted abroad. The U.S. focused increasingly on technology and services rather than raw materials.
China, on the other hand, recognized early that the Electro-Digital Age would depend on rare minerals. It implemented a comprehensive strategy to dominate global supply chains—controlling domestic mines (notably in Inner Mongolia), investing heavily in overseas mining (Africa, South America, Central Asia), and mastering refining and processing, the most crucial step in the chain. Today, China controls over 70% of rare earth element production and more than 80% of global processing capacity.
This dominance has alarmed other major powers—the U.S., EU, Japan, and South Korea—creating tensions reminiscent of the 20th-century oil wars. Minerals such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, and rare earths have become the “new oil.” Beyond consumer tech, they are vital for military industries—missile guidance systems, fighter jets, nuclear submarines—making control of these materials a matter of national security.
In effect, minerals have become a new instrument of great-power influence. China has succeeded in becoming the “mineral kingdom” of the modern era, while the U.S. and its allies lag behind. This sets the stage for an intense strategic rivalry over resources that power the future. As global demand for batteries, EVs, and renewable energy grows, securing critical minerals is now central to the energy race—akin to a 21st-century global “gold rush,” but with deeper geopolitical stakes.
Africa remains the heart of global mineral wealth, led by the Democratic Republic of Congo, which supplies over 60% of the world’s cobalt. The Congo and Zambia are also key copper producers. In South America, Chile, Argentina, and Bolivia form the “Lithium Triangle,” holding over half of global lithium reserves. Yet mining in these regions faces major challenges: water scarcity, local environmental protests, displacement of Indigenous communities, and competition between American, Chinese, and European corporations. Child labor and unsafe conditions add further human costs.
Beiser highlights the irony: while the world needs copper to save the planet from climate change, mining it often results in environmental destruction, violence, and displacement.
Between Deep-Sea and Urban Mining
The ocean floor contains millions of tons of mineral-rich nodules, offering potential sources for key industrial materials. Deep-sea minerals are crucial for EVs, wind turbines, and energy storage. However, mining at depths of 4,000–6,000 meters presents enormous technical challenges, requiring advanced robotics and submersible technology—making it extremely costly with uncertain returns.
Moreover, deep-sea ecosystems remain largely unexplored. Human intervention there could cause irreversible damage. Drilling noise, sediment plumes, and seabed destruction threaten microscopic organisms essential to carbon cycling. Scientists warn that deep-sea mining could trigger “a new oil spill disaster—only on the ocean floor.”
As an alternative, Beiser discusses urban mining and electronic waste recycling as safer ways to meet mineral demand. Urban mining involves extracting valuable metals from cities—within buildings, vehicles, bridges, and discarded electronics. Modern cities, he argues, are “above-ground mines” filled with reusable metals.
Urban mining reduces the environmental impact of traditional mining, cuts carbon emissions from excavation and transport, and creates local supply chains. It also helps manage the mounting problem of urban waste.
Electronic waste, or e-waste, is one of the fastest-growing waste streams on Earth. With rapid tech innovation, device life cycles have shortened drastically. Humanity now produces over 50 million tons of e-waste annually—a figure that keeps rising. If improperly managed, e-waste poses severe health and ecological risks, releasing toxic substances like lead, mercury, and cadmium into soil and groundwater. Illegal burning of e-waste in developing countries emits harmful gases that damage the respiratory system.
However, these recycling alternatives also face challenges: high costs of complex disassembly and material separation, lack of urban recycling infrastructure, and limited manufacturer accountability. To address this, the European Union now requires companies to recycle their products at end-of-life under “extended producer responsibility” rules.
Circular Economy Solutions
Beiser argues that solving the resource crisis requires more than recycling—it demands reuse and redesign to extend product life and maximize material use, a model known as the Circular Economy.
The current linear model—“extract, produce, consume, dispose”—has fueled a culture of rapid consumption, resource depletion, and waste. In contrast, a circular economy emphasizes reuse, repair, remanufacturing, and resale, reducing the pressure on mines, cutting waste, and creating green jobs in repair and second-hand industries.
To move toward this model, companies are adopting sustainable design principles—making products easier to disassemble and repair. The sharing economy and “product-as-a-service” models also incentivize manufacturers to create durable goods, since they retain ownership and responsibility. Creative recycling, or upcycling, turns old materials into higher-value products.
Still, challenges remain: corporate resistance from profit models built on fast turnover, high redesign costs, and the lack of comprehensive global regulations promoting circularity.
Conclusion: Managing the Inevitable
Beiser concludes that governments, companies, and societies must confront the resource crisis head-on to ensure a sustainable future built on clean energy and circular economic systems. The first step is acknowledging a hard truth: there is no perfectly clean energy. Every alternative carries a cost. The solution is not to stop mining altogether but to manage it more intelligently and equitably.
Global policy must balance rising mineral demand with local justice. Most resources are extracted from poor nations but benefit rich ones. Fair distribution of profits and respect for local communities are essential to prevent future resource wars.
Governments must enforce strict environmental standards for mining firms, fund research into renewable technologies, and incentivize circular innovation through tax breaks and green financing. Consumers, too, play a direct role: by reducing unnecessary consumption, reusing devices, and supporting sustainable brands—every purchase becomes a vote shaping the economy of tomorrow.
Source:
Vince Beiser, Power Metal: The Race for the Resources That Will Shape the Future, Riverhead Books, 2024.
