What we're about

We are a small, informal non-fiction book group who meet every couple of weeks and (in theory) discuss one book a month. Although a lot of it is just drinking and chatting ...

With non-fiction virtually anything goes: Art, biographies/memoirs, psychology, ecology, politics, science, history, philosophy...

We meet at around 8pm on the 2nd and 4th Tuesday of each month. Meetings are currently on-line. Once restrictions end we'll be back in the Blue Blazer on Spittal Street. The Blue Blazer has been our 'home' for several years now. It is a bustling pub, not a hushed shrine to the printed word, but it suits us. We are usually at the back of the back room, and we try to have some books on the table so you'll know who we are.

Upcoming events (2)

The Rare Metals War (Guillaume Pitron)

Blue Blazer

### The rare metals war

#### The dark side of clean energy and digital technologies

Guillaume Pitron’s first book, La Guerre des métaux rares, was published by LLL in 2018, translated into English as The Rare Metals War: The dark side of clean energy and digital technologies (2019). The first investigative report to question the benefits of the current energy revolution, it quickly became a bestseller with 100,000 copies sold in France, and has since been published in some fifteen countries.

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.

The Rare Metals War (Guillaume Pitron)

Blue Blazer

### The rare metals war

#### The dark side of clean energy and digital technologies

Guillaume Pitron’s first book, La Guerre des métaux rares, was published by LLL in 2018, translated into English as The Rare Metals War: The dark side of clean energy and digital technologies (2019). The first investigative report to question the benefits of the current energy revolution, it quickly became a bestseller with 100,000 copies sold in France, and has since been published in some fifteen countries.

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.

Past events (58)

Butler to the World (Oliver Bullough)

Blue Blazer