LGM Podcast: Batteries: Past, Present, Future

For the latest LGM podcast, we talked to James Morton Turner, Professor of Environmental Studies at Wellesley, about his new book Charged: A History of Batteries and Lessons for a Clean Energy Future. This is a fantastic book because Turner is an environmental scholar who thinks deeply about things I am passionate about–supply chains, the real impact of consumption, not pretending that a clean energy future is going to be some magical pre-industrial paradise where we aren’t engaging in massive mining and other transformations of the planet. In short, this is a book you want to read if you want to think hard about the entire process of battery production, consumption, and disposal and all the costs in there. We talk about his ideas of an environmentalism of materiality, which is so much more realistic than romanticizing a pre-industrial past we will never see again. It was a great conversation and the book is super readable and interesting. You want to read it.

You can buy the book here and if you order it through January 5 you can get it for $15 plus free shipping when using WINTER23 at check out.

Transcript available here.

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