// NATURE NEWS — SPAZIO & SCIENZA
Earth’s resources sustain humanity — but they come at a high price
Richard Schiffman is an environmental journalist in New York City.
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A huge lithium-mining operation in Chile’s Atacama Desert.Credit: AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd/Alamy
The Elements of Life: How Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium Nourish Us and Threaten the Planet Kerstin Hoppenhaus Greystone (2026)
The Vanishing Earth: Dispatches from the Frontiers of Extraction James Crawford Bloomsbury (2026)
For much of human history, our species has treated Earth as an inexhaustible source of raw materials. In the past half-century, people have taken more resources from the natural world than in our entire previous history. And the rate of extraction is rising as the global population grows.
Oil and gas drilling is shifting to the deep sea — here’s what is at stake
Two books argue that we need to put the brakes on our unsustainable use of resources. In The Vanishing Earth, historian and journalist James Crawford recounts his travels to five landscapes that have been reshaped by drilling and mining.
And, in The Elements of Life, science journalist Kerstin Hoppenhaus examines the three elements vital for plant growth: nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. Both books are informative and non-technical primers on humanity’s ever-increasing use of Earth’s dwindling resources.
Crawford developed an early interest in the impacts of mining as the son of a mechanical engineer who worked in extractive industries around the world, from the coal beds of Scotland to copper mines in Zambia and oil rigs in the North Sea. He is far from being the first to raise such concerns. First-century Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder wrote of how mining operations “urge us to our ruin” and wondered “when will be the end of thus exhausting the earth”.