Rocks, Rodents, and Reckonings

Can we have our cake and eat it too? Can we deal with the seeming contradiction that comes with despoiling the earth to extract the resources that everyone wants and increasingly needs? This clichéd question about cake — once you eat it, you no longer possess it — is central to This Rare Earth: Building the Dams, Mines and Megaprojects That Run Our World. The author, Jeremy Thomas Gilmer, spent twenty-five years working for some of the largest mining and engineering companies on the planet. He has witnessed first-hand the impact that humans can have when they are determined to plunder. Mountains get moved, rivers get poisoned, wetlands and farmers’ fields are taken away.

Now, from the serenity of Saint John, he contemplates what he observed in all those projects. He wants to understand what he was doing in remote places, whether in South America, Africa, or Canada. “How do we depend on these activities, while making things better?” he asks. “How do we heal...