Several weeks ago, the book “Cobalt Red” came to my attention. It apparently details the slave-labor conditions that once again exist in the Congo, a chain reaction to the global surge in demand for lithium batteries, which employ components of cobalt.
My gut reaction was to go out and buy it, but as I’ve mentioned numerous times, I have issues with books, and have to be really careful buying new ones. Moreover, I’m no stranger to books like “Cobalt Red”, and I have to ask myself…what exactly am I hoping to get out of it?
The issue with these books about working conditions on the other side of the world is that there is very little we can do about them. We can put on our activist hats and protest by refusing to buy the next tech gadget, but that only goes so far, and one day your phone will die and you will have to buy a new one, unless you are committed to going full Amish or something. The other option is to fall into the trap many old friends have fallen into, in which you go around pissed off at everyone for not “caring” as much as you do about the “poor people” of the world.
When you collect books like this, all you end up with is a shelf full of cynicism. Moreover, if you are pathological enough, you will think it makes you a better person.
I don’t think it’s wrong to want things. If I buy a Raspberry Pi, a company in the UK earns cash to keep operating, and I can be reasonably comfortable believing their factory workers are treated pretty well, since the UK has pretty decent labor laws, if my understanding is correct. But what happens when you buy something from a place that treats their workers terribly?
I don’t know. You have to perform a pretty serious investigation to figure how everything you own is created. There might be some value in that, but it’s nearly impossible to do if you aren’t naturally interested in economics, geography, supply chains, and global commerce. Does that make you a terrible person? No.
I can say, though, that I’m glad the Green New Deal has been canned. That whole thing about phasing out combustion engines in the next 5-10 years has always struck me as ridiculous, especially since EVs just pull from the power grid, replacing their batteries is notoriously expensive, and getting stuck in one if it catches fire is a gruesome death sentence. I think EVs are dumb, and I don’t know why so many people want them. [cue South Park “smug” episode on the Prius]
And if you thought the United States cared about the environment, they recently threw a lot of progress out in the name of powering massive AI data centers, because the billionaires must be appeased, I guess. That’s a heck of a lot of energy consumption just so the average Joe can listen to Frank Sinatra singing rap songs. Profits tend to come before people, I guess, and almost always before the environment.
So I probably won’t buy this book any time soon, because I already know what it says: the conditions for those people are terrible. Probably heart-breaking. And that sucks. I don’t honestly know what to do about that.
I don’t think there’s any virtue in burying your head in the sand to keep out world events, but at the same time, there’s also no virtue to keeping your eyes glued the news every day. Too often, the people who tell you not to trust the news spend a tremendous amount of time watching it.
I once built this open source web application to help a company I was connected to on the other side of the world. I technically did complete it, but it didn’t have buy-in from all the departments, and I think the open source license I gave it – which absolved me of legal responsibility – also scared them away. They had loved it all along, though, but something was lost in translation; moreover, they really needed an IT person to install and monitor it, but they seemed to be avoiding that at all costs. It was a very heavy lesson that making a difference in the world can be extremely difficult. It can certainly be done, though, if not at a large scale, then most certainly at a small scale. Being kind to the barista can make a difference. Caring about your friends can make a difference. Calling your parents every now and then can make a difference. Don’t get me wrong. But this idea that reading a ton of books, feeling guilty, pushing this guilt on yourself and others, and pretending that you can take on the weight of the world, as if that were your responsibility – or even capability – is foolish, when it isn’t outright pathological.
This is obviously a big topic that I can’t hope to cover in one post, but I’m realizing that if I want to use my tech skills to make the world a better place, it honestly might take a long time before I’m truly effective, and I shouldn’t let that discourage me. Sometimes, I think a lot of people go into activism because they don’t know how to make a difference otherwise, and they don’t have the patience to endure a training program in accounting, forestry, business, or whatever, which are often the things that actually make a difference overseas, and instead they settle for reading books, “knowing things”, and getting really worked up about it all. As I mentioned many years ago, I briefly considered joining the Peace Corp after college, until I realized you needed real skills in one of those areas, otherwise you would be relegated to doing “public health education” in remote regions. There is really no role for “readers who really, really care”, as there is little value in people who simply bum around the field office really, really caring.
Somebody investigated the scoop. Somebody shared these results in a book. The book exists, and others can read it, and get the scoop. This is good. The world is better now that the truth is out. But it may not be super valuable to you if you aren’t otherwise in a position to make a difference, and if you want to read it just to be informed, that’s fine, but I don’t think the quest to be informed should take priority over the more actionable things in your own life. Just my $0.02.