The author of three previous books on modern slavery and a senior fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health, he’s also one hell of an investigative reporter.
His most recent book is "Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives." To research it, he made multiple journeys into militia-controlled areas of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the central African country where 75% of the world’s cobalt is mined.
"This rare, silver metal is an essential component to almost every lithium-ion rechargeable battery made today," Mr. Kara writes. "The Katanga region in the southeast corner of the Congo holds more reserves of cobalt than the rest of the planet combined."
So, Congo must be among the world’s richest nations, right? No, it is among the world’s poorest. More on that in a moment. First, a smidgeon of science.
The lithium-ion batteries that power electric vehicles require large amounts of cobalt to increase their "energy density," the ratio of mass to energy. Only "lithium-ion chemistries using cobalt cathodes are currently able to deliver maximum energy density while maintaining thermal stability," Mr. Kara explains.
As a result, global demand for cobalt is enormous and expected to grow explosively. Twenty-four nations have pledged to eliminate the sale of gasoline-powered vehicles by 2040. They are using subsidies, regulations and mandates to propel this transition — whether most buyers and sellers of cars like it or not.
Cobalt can be mined using machines that run on diesel fuel, a fact often ignored when EVs are called "emissions-free." But Mr. Kara’s focus is on the more than 30% of cobalt mining in Congo that is "artisanal" — a euphemism for "hundreds of thousands of people engaged in the feverish excavation of cobalt in medieval conditions."
More specifically, Mr. Kara surreptitiously visited numerous mines where cobalt was being extracted "by the blistered hands of peasants using picks, shovels, and rebar" in "hazardous pits and tunnels."
His investigations revealed that cobalt mining in Congo involves "slavery, child labor, forced labor, debt bondage, human trafficking, hazardous and toxic working conditions, pathetic wages, injury and death, and incalculable environmental harm."
One local researcher told Mr. Kara: "The mining companies have polluted the entire region. All the crops, animals and fish stocks are contaminated."
No one accepts "responsibility at all for the negative consequences of cobalt mining in the Congo," Mr. Kara writes, "not the Congolese government, not foreign mining companies, not battery manufacturers, and certainly not mega-cap tech and car companies."
He’s not wrong, but I’d argue that he doesn’t sufficiently emphasize Beijing’s role in the exploitation of Congo’s resources and people.
Roughly 90% of Congo’s mining exports go to China, where they are processed and where batteries are manufactured for sale around the world. The energy source for this processing and manufacturing: mostly coal, the most polluting hydrocarbon.
How did China achieve its dominant position in Congo? Mr. Kara observed that some Congolese