Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives

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Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives

Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives

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£9.9 FREE Shipping

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While many in this fight are sympathetic to the suffering, Kara not only brings true expertise, he brings true empathy. Read this book to immerse yourself in both." -- Jean Baderschneider, CEO, Global Fund to End Modern Slavery Cobalt is an essential ingredient of the rechargeable lithium-ion batteries that power our smartphones, laptops and electric cars. It’s a rare, silvery metal that is also used in many of our low-carbon innovations crucial to achieving our climate sustainability goals. It’s mined in the Katanga region, a part of the Congo that has more reserves than the rest of the world combined.

Cobalt Red is a flawed account of Congo’s Siddharth Kara’s Cobalt Red is a flawed account of Congo’s

In this tour-de-force exposé, Kara...uncovers the abuse and suffering powering the digital revolution...Throughout, Kara's empathetic profiles and dogged reporting on the murkiness of the cobalt supply chain are buttressed by incisive history lessons on the 19th-century plunder of the Congo...Readers will be outraged and empowered to call for change." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)

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In the Western world, almost all our technological devices use rechargeable batteries, and with the push to move to more electronic vehicles, there are more and more rechargeables needed. A good amount of cobalt goes into each of those batteries, and the Congo is where you’ll find the majority of cobalt to be mined. The author is very, very, brave. The people and children of Congo are very, very, brave [they do what they have to do to have lives, even though it is full of pain and poverty and more often than not, death]. The guides that took the author around and got people to talk to him are very, very, brave. I am writing this review on my laptop with a rechargeable battery, looking at my tablet with a rechargeable battery. I brushed my teeth this morning with an electric toothbrush with, yes, a rechargeable battery. I wear a smart watch, with a rechargeable battery. And when we trade in our leased car, I expect its replacement choices will all be EV cars.

He Needed a Big Megaphone, So He Wrote a Best Seller

Of all the tragedies that have afflicted the Congo, perhaps the greatest of all is the fact that the suffering taking place in the mining provinces today is entirely preventable. But why fix a problem if no one thinks it exists? Most people do not know what is happening in the cobalt mines of the Congo, because the realities are hidden behind numerous layers of multinational supply chains that serve to erode accountability. By the time one traces the chain from the child slogging in the cobalt mine to the rechargeable gadgets and cars sold to consumers around the world, the links have been misdirected beyond recognition, like a con man running a shell game. To understand these realities, we must first lay a bit of groundwork in this chapter on the Congo and the cobalt mining supply chain. Our journey will then begin in an old colonial mining town called Lubumbashi. From there, a single road traverses the mining provinces deeper into the heart of cobalt territory. As we follow this road, the conditions of cobalt mining will be revealed with each passing mile through the firsthand accounts of the children, women, and men who dig for cobalt, as well as my own reporting on the mineral traders, government officials, multinational corporations, and other stakeholders that profit from their work. Nearing the center of cobalt mining in Kolwezi, we will encounter testimonies of a darker truth, one that cannot be fathomed. I saw it for myself on September 21, 2019, at a place called Kamilombe. I will take you there, just as I took the journey, down the only road that leads to the truth. Siddharth Kara is turning a brilliant spotlight on these inhumane practices. My hope is that people will read the truth of his many trips and interviews and feel compassion for the miners and their families, while the companies that produce the products that benefit us all turn up the heat on the way the mines are really being run, as exposed by Kara. Although the officials in the Congo believe that they need to help themselves, someone needs to start the ball rolling. Another quote spoke to me. “The mineral reserves in Congo will last another forty years, maybe fifty? During that time, the population of Congo will double. If our resources are sold to foreigners for the benefit of the political elite, instead of investing in education and development for our people, in two generations, we will have two hundred million people who are poor, uneducated, and have nothing left of value.” This nonfiction book will make you stop and think about the impact our lives have on others around the world. The book explores the impact of cobalt mining on the people of Democratic Republic of the Congo. Cobalt is used in the rechargeable devices we all use. As the world continues to embrace the net zero agenda and becomes ever more dependent on personal electronic devices and new technologies, this compelling book paints a dire portrait of the conditions under which a crucial natural resource is extracted. Drawing on multiple field missions and first-hand accounts of the process of cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Siddharth Kara shows in vivid detail not only life on the ground and the true human cost of extraction, but also the gross inequalities built into global value chains and business models that underpin this industry. This account reinforces our understanding of the interdependent and mutually reinforcing nature of all human rights and the many negative externalities of our modern global economy." — Todd Landman, Professor of Political Science, Pro Vice Chancellor of the Faculty of Social Sciences, and Executive Director of the Rights Lab at the University of Nottingham

Themes

I was extremely blessed to get an audiobook ARC for this read and I am so glad I did. The narration for this book was fantastic. I will be adding this narrator to my "must listen" list. He tells the story of Congo and cobalt and all that has happened to the author in a straightforward, easy to listen to way and I am so grateful to have received this audiobook; it made an already very difficult read a teeny bit easier. Today’s tech barons will tell you a similar tale about cobalt. They will tell you that they uphold international human rights norms and that their particular supply chains are clean. They will assure you that conditions are not as bad as they seem and that they are bringing commerce, wages, education, and development to the poorest people of Africa (“saving” them). They will also assure you that they have implemented changes to remedy the problems on the ground, at least at the mines from which they say they buy cobalt. After all, who is going to go all the way to the Congo and prove otherwise, and even if they did, who would believe them? With extraordinary tenacity and compassion, Siddharth Kara evokes one of the most dramatic divides between wealth and poverty in the world today. His reporting on how the dangerous, ill-paid labor of Congo children provides a mineral essential to our cellphones will break your heart. I hope policy-makers on every continent will read this book." - Adam Hochschild, author of King Leopold's Ghost The truth, however, is this—but for their demand for cobalt and the immense profits they accrue through the sale of smartphones, tablets, laptops, and electric vehicles, the entire blood-for-cobalt economy would not exist. Furthermore, the inevitable outcome of a lawless scramble for cobalt in an impoverished and war-torn country can only be the complete dehumanization of the people exploited at the bottom of the chain.



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