Unstoppable

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Unsustainable to Unstoppable

Diamonds. “Tears of the gods.” The most concentrated form of wealth known to humanity. Few objects conjure such a range of experience and emotion. Searing heat in deep layers of the earth’s mantle yields the product called ice. Miners in hardscrabble African villages and polishers in India’s bustling diamond centers create gemstones worn by the world’s elite. A product often associated with bleak and poor regions, diamonds have become a symbol of enduring love.

For all the emotions evoked by the gems and their production, the business world of diamonds was, for decades, more like diamond itself: colorless and highly stable. De Beers Consolidated Mines, descendant of a company founded in 1880 by explorer ...