Cobalt
In the first three paragraphs of 'Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives' Siddharth Kara describes the scene at a Cobalt Mine where a young child has died due to the horrific conditions of the mine. The entry reads:
THE SOLDIERS ARE WILD and wide-eyed as they point their weapons at the villagers trying to enter the mining area at Kamilombe. Although they are desperate to reach their loved ones just a stone’s throw away, the villagers are denied access. What has happened here must not be seen. There can be no record or evidence, only the haunting memories of those who stood at this place where hope was lost. My guide urges me to stay at the periphery; the situation is too unpredictable. From the fringes, it is difficult to see the details of the accident. The craterous landscape is obscured by a leaden haze that refuses the entry of light. Distant hills appear only as the vague silhouette of a lumbering beast.
I move closer to investigate, treading carefully into the boiling crowd. I catch sight of a body in the dirt. It is a child, lying motionless within a storm of dust and despair. I try to make out the features of his face, but they elude me. Around the lifeless body, the ocher gravel has been stained in dark shades of red, like burnt umber or rusted metal. Until this moment, I thought that the ground in the Congo took its vermillion hue from the copper in the dirt, but now I cannot help but wonder whether the earth here is red because of all the blood that has spilled upon it.
I inch toward the cordon to see the child more clearly. Tensions between the soldiers and villagers escalate to the brink of riot. A soldier shouts angrily and waves his gun at me. I’ve drifted too close and lingered too long. I take one final look toward the child. I can see his face now, locked in a terminal expression of dread. That is the lasting image I take from the Congo—the heart of Africa reduced to the bloodstained corpse of a child, who died solely because he was digging for cobalt.[1]
Summary
From Wikipedia:
Cobalt is a chemical element with the symbol Co and atomic number 27. As with nickel, cobalt is found in the Earth's crust only in a chemically combined form, save for small deposits found in alloys of natural meteoric iron. The free element, produced by reductive smelting, is a hard, lustrous, silver metal.
Today, some cobalt is produced specifically from one of a number of metallic-lustered ores, such as cobaltite (CoAsS). The element is, however, more usually produced as a by-product of copper and nickel mining. The Copperbelt in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Zambia yields most of the global cobalt production. World production in 2016 was 116,000 tonnes (114,000 long tons; 128,000 short tons) (according to Natural Resources Canada), and the DRC alone accounted for more than 50%.
Cobalt is primarily used in lithium-ion batteries, and in the manufacture of magnetic, wear-resistant and high-strength alloys. The compounds cobalt silicate and cobalt(II) aluminate (CoAl2O4, cobalt blue) give a distinctive deep blue color to glass, ceramics, inks, paints and varnishes. Cobalt occurs naturally as only one stable isotope, cobalt-59. Cobalt-60 is a commercially important radioisotope, used as a radioactive tracer and for the production of high-energy gamma rays.
Cobalt is the active center of a group of coenzymes called cobalamins. Vitamin B12, the best-known example of the type, is an essential vitamin for all animals. Cobalt in inorganic form is also a micronutrient for bacteria, algae, and fungi.
Cobalt was first used during the Bronze Age to color pottery.[2]
Katanga
There is more Cobalt in the Katanga region of the Congo than the rest of the world combined.[3] These materials are vital to lithium-ion rechargeable batteries.
The region [Katange] is also brimming with other valuable metals, including copper, iron, zinc, tin, nickel, manganese, germanium, tantalum, tungsten, uranium, gold, silver, and lithium. The deposits were always there, resting dormant for eons before foreign economies made the dirt valuable. Industrial innovations sparked demand for one metal after another, and somehow they all happened to be in Katanga. The remainder of the Congo is similarly bursting with natural resources. Foreign powers have penetrated every inch of this nation to extract its rich supplies of ivory, palm oil, diamonds, timber, rubber … and to make slaves of its people. Few nations are blessed with a more diverse abundance of resource riches than the Congo. No country in the world has been more severely exploited.[4]
"Renewable" Energy
Electric Vehicles
Tesla
In May 2023 -- a few months after Joe Rogan interviewed Siddharth Kara -- Tesla announced that it will conduct a third-party audit of its battery supply chain.[5] Elon Musk used his platform, Twitter, to claim he "will review the audit personally." He added: "If you drive a Tesla, you should be able to believe in it to your core."[6]
Cell Phones
Cobalt Mines
International Regulatory Coalitions
Many large international corporations requiring Cobalt to produce their products claim to strictly monitor the conditions of Cobalt mines, often times, through two leading coalitions: the Responsible Minerals Initiative and the Global Battery Alliance. In Cobalt Red Siddartha Kara challenges the efficacy of these organizations:
In all my time in the Congo, I never saw or heard of any activities linked to either of these coalitions, let alone anything that resembled corporate commitments to international human rights standards, third-party audits, or zero-tolerance policies on forced and child labor. On the contrary, across twenty-one years of research into slavery and child labor, I have never seen more extreme predation for profit than I witnessed at the bottom of global cobalt supply chains. The titanic companies that sell products containing Congolese cobalt are worth trillions, yet the people who dig their cobalt out of the ground eke out a base existence characterized by extreme poverty and immense suffering. They exist at the edge of human life in an environment that is treated like a toxic dumping ground by foreign mining companies. Millions of trees have been clear-cut, dozens of villages razed, rivers and air polluted, and arable land destroyed. Our daily lives are powered by a human and environmental catastrophe in the Congo.[7]
Horrific Conditions
Sources
- ↑ Kara, S. (2023). Cobalt red: how the blood of the Congo powers our lives (First edition.). St. Martin's Press. Page, 1-2
- ↑ Kara, S. (2023). Cobalt red: how the blood of the Congo powers our lives (First edition.). St. Martin's Press.
- ↑ Kara, S. (2023). Cobalt red: how the blood of the Congo powers our lives (First edition.). St. Martin's Press.
- ↑ Kara, S. (2023). Cobalt red: how the blood of the Congo powers our lives (First edition.). St. Martin's Press.
- ↑ https://www.tesla-mag.com/tesla-to-conduct-third-party-audit-of-its-battery-material-suppliers/
- ↑ https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1659340198340067328
- ↑ Kara, S. (2023). Cobalt red: how the blood of the Congo powers our lives (First edition.). St. Martin's Press.