Talk of the digital revolution, energy transition and ecological transformation abounds. There are those — journalists, politicians, researchers and futurists — who tell us there’s a new world, free at last from fossil fuels, pollution, shortages, and political and military tension. This formidably documented book, the fruit of six years of research, shows us why nothing could be further from the truth. In unyoking ourselves from fossil fuels, we are merely taking on a new dependency on rare metals. Lithium, cobalt, rare earth, tungsten, nickel... They have become indispensable to the development of the new green (windfarms, solar panels, etc.) and digital society (embedded in our phones, computers, tablets and other smart devices we use every day). Yet the environmental, economic and political costs of this dependency will be even higher than those of our current industrial society.