Reviews and Comments

Well-written, as one has come to expect of Monbiot, the book starts off strongly with a deep dive into soil ecology, which helps to frame later discussion of how soil should be seen as a living matrix and not just an inert substrate for plants and chemicals. The book really takes off over the next few chapters, detailing all the many problems with the current system of food production. Of particular note is the way that so much land and food production is so inefficiently mediated through meat, particularly beef. The second half of the book felt considerably weaker. Monbiot visits several unconventional farms, examining each in quite some detail and, while each seems a healthier alternative to more usual agriculture, none seemed particularly viable if scaled up to feed everyone. There's definitely lots of good stuff in here, and some of his prognoses are, frankly, a bit terrifying, but the stronger material felt rather let down by the weaker chapters.

First up, it has to be said that this book is breathtakingly brutal. The descriptions of the conditions under which Congolese artisanal miners work, and the injuries they suffer, are heartrending. The author has obviously shown great persistence, bravery, and empathy in investigating in the field. He counterposes statements from major electronics and EV manufacturers against the claim that there is no such thing as 'clean' cobalt, because artisanal (i.e., hand-mined) cobalt is merged into the supply chain so early that it can't be distinguished from mechanically-mined cobalt. That said, I'd have liked to see more explanation of just how the supposed certification processes function and how they fail so badly. That would also likely alleviate my other criticism which is that focusing on his observations in the field, involving Congolese security guards and officials together with Chinese dealers, runs the risk of occluding the role of Western companies in this dismal supply chain.

Slightly embarrassing confession time -- I requested this from the library because the wait list for 'Cobalt Red' is so long, and only after I received it did I discover that it's about silver mining in the Northern Ontario town of Cobalt. Still, glad I did so -- so much great history here, examining how the utilization of the mineral reserves was based on the exploitation of the local Indigenous people, the mineworkers (many of whom were very recent European immigrants), and the environment.

The late nineteenth century was marked by brutal industrial development everywhere, but it feels as if it was even more naked in this 'frontier' town where the mining companies could just decide to excavate the main street or even within peoples' houses, and the mineworkers had to borrow to pay their way up north and could be hunted down if they tried to leave before their debts were repaid.

The book also deals with the way the wealth generated in this northern town was rapidly funneled south to Toronto, building that town up to be the financial capital it now is. Particularly ironic that the nearby town of Temagami and its surrounding lakes were sold to the rich Torontonians as a location for 'rugged outdoorsy' activities such as canoeing, while only 40km away lakes were being drained for mining and others were polluted with arsenic and cyanide.

The silver was mostly mined-out by the end of the First World War, and the book then jumps to the present in the concluding three chapters, covering how mining in Canada still receives extraordinary tax breaks that are largely kept secret, how Canadian mining companies have exported their exploitative practices elsewhere in the world, and how the town looks set to experience another round of mining as there are local cobalt deposits that might be useful for batteries.