I consider myself a pirate. So, among other embarrassments, I have a gold hoop in my ear. A silver one too, matey. Now I'm thinking, maybe it'd be piratical of me to complete the set? Add a copper earring to the lobe? Mixing metals! Apparently it's very trendy these days.
Then I read an excerpt from Vince Beiser's new book, Power Metal. Three fun facts there: (1) Copper is second only to silver as the best natural conductor of electricity on Earth. So it's no surprise that (2) things like electric vehicles need a lot of it. Like my exact weight in it, apparently—175 pounds of copper per EV. Aargh.
"The amount of copper we'll need over the next 25 years," Vince writes, "will add up to more than the human race has consumed in its entire history." So I should probably buy that copper earring stat. Or, being a pirate, steal it. But as I say, I've read Vince's excerpt, so I now know that (3) when people try to steal copper, which they do, all over the world, from South America to (more recently) central Africa, horrible things happen. Violence. Bloodshed. Death. It's scary. Not a laughing matter.
A pirate's life? Maybe it's not for me.
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