Authoritative analysis of a crucial issue and the tough choices ahead, backed by solid research.
Going green will require new materials, but getting them raises difficult questions.
The long conflict between resource development and environmental protection shows no signs of abating, and a crucial new dimension has been added, according to Reuters senior correspondent Scheyder. If the U.S. wants to address climate change and transition to a sustainable economy, it must have supplies of the necessary materials. Lithium, a critical component of the batteries for electric vehicles and energy storage, is particularly crucial, but copper, cobalt, nickel, and manganese are also necessary. Most of these are difficult to mine, even harder to process, and the process requires massive investment. Several countries, including the U.S., have resources in the ground, but at present, China dominates production and processing. Among many other sites around the world, Scheyder follows a case concerning the huge Rhyolite Ridge lithium deposit in Nevada. The problem is that mining might endanger a unique buckwheat flower. Other proposed projects raise environmental concerns or could disturb sites sacred to Indigenous peoples. The mining companies say they can extract the resources responsibly, but opponents point out that their record is poor when it comes to conservation. The issue for environmental activists and regulatory agencies is one of competing priorities. Should we allow mining as a means of addressing climate change and hope it doesn’t create other problems, or prevent it and hope that China will be a reliable partner? Scheyder does not come down on either side; his intent is to highlight the difficulty of the decisions that leaders must make in the coming years. To his credit, he visited several of the proposed projects and talked to the people involved. The result is a well-informed, fair-minded book that deserves attention from many quarters.
Authoritative analysis of a crucial issue and the tough choices ahead, backed by solid research.Pub Date: Jan. 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781668011805
Page Count: 384
Publisher: One Signal/Atria
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2023
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
A top-notch political memoir and serious exercise in practical politics for every reader.
In the first volume of his presidential memoir, Obama recounts the hard path to the White House.
In this long, often surprisingly candid narrative, Obama depicts a callow youth spent playing basketball and “getting loaded,” his early reading of difficult authors serving as a way to impress coed classmates. (“As a strategy for picking up girls, my pseudo-intellectualism proved mostly worthless,” he admits.) Yet seriousness did come to him in time and, with it, the conviction that America could live up to its stated aspirations. His early political role as an Illinois state senator, itself an unlikely victory, was not big enough to contain Obama’s early ambition, nor was his term as U.S. Senator. Only the presidency would do, a path he painstakingly carved out, vote by vote and speech by careful speech. As he writes, “By nature I’m a deliberate speaker, which, by the standards of presidential candidates, helped keep my gaffe quotient relatively low.” The author speaks freely about the many obstacles of the race—not just the question of race and racism itself, but also the rise, with “potent disruptor” Sarah Palin, of a know-nothingism that would manifest itself in an obdurate, ideologically driven Republican legislature. Not to mention the meddlings of Donald Trump, who turns up in this volume for his idiotic “birther” campaign while simultaneously fishing for a contract to build “a beautiful ballroom” on the White House lawn. A born moderate, Obama allows that he might not have been ideological enough in the face of Mitch McConnell, whose primary concern was then “clawing [his] way back to power.” Indeed, one of the most compelling aspects of the book, as smoothly written as his previous books, is Obama’s cleareyed scene-setting for how the political landscape would become so fractured—surely a topic he’ll expand on in the next volume.
A top-notch political memoir and serious exercise in practical politics for every reader.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6316-9
Page Count: 768
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2020
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