Siddharth Kara's 'Cobalt Red' is a powerful exposé of cobalt mining, which powers green technologies even as it destroys Congo's poorest people.
AdvertisementMassive displacement, as homes are cleared, neighborhoods destroyed, millions of trees chopped down to make way for open pit mines.Miners and their families sickened with high levels of cobalt and heavy metals in their urine and blood, cobalt dust in their lungs and — in some zones — yellow sulfuric acid dust caking their bodies and their homes.
Overstated? Not on the evidence presented in the book. “Cobalt Red” is largely anecdotal by necessity, because very little hard data exist on the Congo cobalt supply chain. But the anecdotes are rich and detailed, the product of several years spent inside the Congo at great risk to himself. Congo holds a sizable population of ethnic Indians, and Kara’s Indian background made him less conspicuous than a white traveler would have been.
The diggers scavenge “for whatever scraps they [can] find, like birds picking at bones after the big cats have finished gorging,” Kara writes. One study showed as much as 30% of Congo’s cobalt is sourced from artisanal mines. Kara paints unflinching portraits of the people who toil at the bottom of the rechargeable battery supply chain. One is Priscilla, who makes less than the male diggers, eighty cents a day. “Priscilla said that she had no family and lived in a hut of her own,” Kara writes. “Her husband used to work at the site with her, but he died a year ago from a respiratory illness. They tried to have children, but she miscarried twice. ‘I thank God for taking my babies,’ she said.
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