What’s buried beneath the convenience of modern life? Understanding Raw.
Theme for You to Think About, June 2025 | Reading Cobalt Red, by Siddharth Kara
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Happy Monday! Welcome back to our new format for this newsletter. To kick off the month we’ll introduce you to the theme we’re exploring as a community and two weeks later, bring you a guest expert interviewee to dive deeper on the theme.
We’re building this newsletter alongside you; growing together as a curious, thoughtful community, united by a shared desire to better understand and contribute to the world we live in. We hope you enjoy it!
At Rebel Book Club this June, we’re going beneath the surface… literally.
We’re looking into the extractive, often invisible systems that power our lives through the lens of raw materials like cobalt, copper, oil, and silicon.
These materials are the lifeblood of modern civilisation and form the backbone of everything from smartphones to satellites, electric vehicles to energy grids. Yet the path from mine to market is rarely straightforward, and never neutral.
Global trade in raw materials is shaped by colonial legacies, corporate secrecy, and geopolitical strategy. From the unregulated artisanal mines of the Congo to the state-subsidised chip factories of Taiwan and the high-stakes commodity deals brokered in Geneva, we live in a world where power concentrates in the hands of those who control supply, not creation.
The pursuit of 'green' futures often runs on dirty realities. Cobalt, essential to electric vehicle batteries, is mined under dangerous conditions by workers (including children earning just dollars a day). Microchips, tiny but mighty, have become the most contested resource in global politics, influencing everything from military dominance to economic stability.
This month’s theme RAW is showing us the costs behind the convenience. Revealing the human and environmental toll buried within our clean, connected lives.
Conversation Starters: on RAW
Time to get curious! Try these Conversation Starters and see what you learn about the world around you.
What’s the most essential object in your life, and what raw materials make it possible?
How does power shift when access to a resource becomes scarce?
Can ethical consumption exist in an extractive economy?
Where in your daily life are you most disconnected from the human cost of production?
Every single month since 2015 Rebel Book Club members vote for a book, then meet monthly to reflect on the book’s lessons, and to take action.
This month we are reading: Cobalt Red by Siddharth Kara.
A searing exposé of the human rights crisis at the heart of the tech and green energy revolutions. Drawing on firsthand testimony from miners in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kara reveals how cobalt—essential to batteries in smartphones, laptops, and electric vehicles—is extracted under brutal, often deadly conditions. This book forces a reckoning with the hidden costs of our global supply chains and the lives exploited to sustain them.
On Monday 23rd June RBC paid members meet online to discuss this month’s book, ‘Cobalt Red’ and in nine different cities worldwide. Members can also join Rebel Coffees and community chat.
Join members gathering monthly by becoming a member — we welcome seasoned bookworms and non-fiction newcomers alike!