“Cobalt Red”

[ndrosen]

I have been reading Siddharth Kara’s Cobalt Red, an account of cobalt mining in the Congo; demand for cobalt has soared, largely for lithium-cobalt batteries, such as the one (I presume) in the iPadAir which I’m using now. Unfortunately, mining in the Congo is a horror, with the men, women, and children doing the actual mining being paid very little, while vast amounts are absorbed by middlemen, mining companies, and corrupt officials. The money supposedly being paid for mining concessions doesn’t show up in the official budget of the Congolese government, and the author admits that he does not know where it goes. There are also the environmental horrors of mining waste, sulfuric acid used in processing the ore, and so forth.