Journalist Vince Beiser Will Explore the ‘Real Costs of Green Energy’

On Wednesday, November 16, 2022, at Davidson College, journalist Vince Beiser will delve into his latest Pulitzer Center-supported project, The Real Costs of Green Energy, an investigation into how the shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy is, while unquestionably necessary, also causing serious damage to people and the planet—and what we can do about it.

Beiser is an award-winning journalist and author of the book The World in a Grain: The Story of Sand and How it Transformed Civilization. The book, translated into five languages, was a finalist for a 2019 PEN America Award and a California Book Award. It also led to a TEDx talk.

Beiser’s next book project is Power Metal, about the trillion-dollar global scramble for the rare metals we need to transition to a world run on renewable energy—and the human and environmental damage that may come with it.

He has exposed conditions in California's harshest prisons, trained with troops bound for Iraq, ridden with first responders to disasters in Haiti and Nepal, and hunted down other stories from around the world for several publications, including Wired, the Los Angeles Times Magazine, Harper's, The Atlantic, Village Voice, The New Republic, The Nation, Mother Jones, Playboy, Rolling Stone, and The New York Times.

Beiser’s work has been honored by Investigative Reporters and Editors; the Society of Professional Journalists; the Columbia, Medill, and Missouri graduate schools of journalism; the American Society of Journalists and Authors; the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies; and many other institutions.

He has also twice been part of a team that won the National Magazine Award for General Excellence, the magazine industry's highest honor.

In addition to delivering a keynote lecture informed by research for his forthcoming book, Beiser will meet with students and faculty.

This event is made possible by the Pulitzer Center and the Dean Rusk International Studies Program. Davidson College is a Campus Consortium partner.