A review by sebswann
Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives by Siddharth Kara
dark
informative
sad
medium-paced
4.5
“On the contrary, across twenty-one years of research into slavery and child labor, I have never seen more extreme predation for profit than I witnessed at the bottom of global cobalt supply chains. The titanic companies that sell products containing Congolese cobalt are worth trillions, yet the people who dig their cobalt out of the ground eke out a base existence characterized by extreme poverty and immense suffering. They exist at the edge of human life in an environment that is treated like a toxic dumping ground by foreign mining companies. Millions of trees have been clear-cut, dozens of villages razed, rivers and air polluted, and arable land destroyed. Our daily lives are powered by a human and environmental catastrophe in the Congo.”
Read this if you want to better understand the absolutely horrific situation in the Congo that our modem world is built on and will continue to be built on for the foreseeable future, as this abusive, colonialist cycle—perpetuated by wholly inadequate, immoral, cowardly, and greedy efforts of governments and corporations—continues. Credit to Kara for his efforts investigating and publicizing this story.
Read this if you want to better understand the absolutely horrific situation in the Congo that our modem world is built on and will continue to be built on for the foreseeable future, as this abusive, colonialist cycle—perpetuated by wholly inadequate, immoral, cowardly, and greedy efforts of governments and corporations—continues. Credit to Kara for his efforts investigating and publicizing this story.