In Joseph Conrad’s novel Nostromo (1904), Charles Gould, the British proprietor of a Latin American silver mine, becomes dangerously dependent on his treasure. “[He] had swallowed the pill and it was as though it had been compounded of some subtle poison that acted directly on his brain. He became at once mine-ridden.”
It does not end well for Gould, but his fate used to feel confined to fiction. Tales of exploitation of mineral assets such as silver, copper and iron seemed more relics of the past than pivotal parts of the modern economy. In the services and technology age — what Ed Conway dubs “the ethereal world” — these were mundane commodities that could be easily bought on global markets.
But as Conway, economics editor of Sky News, points out in Material World, we are all mine-ridden now. New resources are needed to produce computers, build homes and offices, and make both internal combustion engine and electric cars. “Far from being independent from the physical world around us, we have never been more reliant upon it.”
Battery makers and the companies they supply are competing to secure access to lithium for batteries. China and the west are in a global contest for control of the silicon chips in millions of devices. Natural gas fracking has given the US energy independence, while Russia has used its fossil fuels to blackmail European countries.
No one could accuse Conway of lacking global sweep in his examination of six materials in the new economy. He crosses the world to many mines and quarries, as well as the high-tech factories that need what they produce, to drive home an awkward truth. We still live in a material world and rely on drilling machines and explosives to feed it.
His materials are sand (for concrete), salt (fertiliser), iron (and steel), copper (electrical wires), oil and lithium. One could quibble about the six — what about cobalt, nickel or platinum? — but they are enough to make his point. They also let him dig up fascinating stories from history.
He records that one of the first naval engagements of the first world war took place off the Pacific coast of Chile as Germany and Britain battled for control of nitrates needed for explosives. Later, despite Mao Zedong’s obsession with steel production in the 1950s, China was unable to produce a high-quality steel ballpoint pen in 2015, as its premier Li Keqiang complained.
Sometimes on his journey, as he describes another deep mine or roaring furnace, I missed photos, or indeed videos. Conway is a television reporter, after all. He makes a good fist of describing Chuquicamata, a vast copper mine in Chile, but I found it easier to look online for his Sky News report last year and watch the footage.
He lucidly shows the scale of the environmental problem and the irony of new demand created by efforts to wean ourselves off oil on to batteries. Meanwhile, without copper and fibre optics, “there would be no data centres, no electricity”. In 2019, more materials were extracted than in the years to 1950 combined.
The obvious conclusion is that the winners of the future will be the countries that own or control the most mineral assets: they will be able to make the most cars and computer chips at the lowest cost. China’s relentless focus on securing raw materials from Africa through its Belt and Road Initiative has paid off in lithium.
But it is not that simple. You also need to be able to make the right silicon wafers, and etch them with the most sophisticated machines, made by ASML of the Netherlands. The US is hurting China by blocking access to these tools, and the chipmaker TSMC (“a company that embodies the material world”) sits in Taiwan.
The story of Nostromo, with its corruption, violence and great power rivalry, still resonates. The difference is that competition now reaches up the supply chain for metals and minerals. Until there is an alternative, the environment will keep being exploited and the earth being mined.
Material World: A Substantial Story of Our Past and Future by Ed Conway WH Allen £22, 512 pages
John Gapper is FT Weekend business columnist
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