Joined: 11-06-2004 Posts: 60,076 |
DrMaddVibe wrote:I'm glad you don't believe you're trying to save the planet. Everyone should own a few slaves right? Windmills eh? Rogan Guest Goes Viral After Exposing "Subhuman" And "Appalling" Cobalt Mining Conditions In Congo There is one part to the "green" EV revolution that we have written about - but that no one else is talking about: the incessant need for cobalt and the "appalling" way that the battery metal is mined and produced.
After a recent Joe Rogan podcast that went out to the viral host's 40 million plus listeners, we're hopeful that dialogue may finally start to take place.
Siddharth Kara, who is a Harvard visiting professor and also the author of “Cobalt Red: How The Blood of The Congo Powers Our Lives" took to the podcast last week with comments about cobalt mining that already have more than a million listens.
He told Rogan that there's no such thing as "clean cobalt" and that the term was "all marketing," according to a wrap up of the podcast by the NY Post. He noted that the level of suffering of Congolese people working in cobalt mines was "astounding", the report says.
“I’ve never seen [a cobalt mine that did not rely on child labor or slavery] and I’ve been to almost all the major industrial cobalt mines," he told Rogan.
Yet, modern demand for cobalt doesn't look like it's going to slow down any time soon. “Cobalt is in every single lithium, rechargeable battery manufactured in the world today," Kara said to Rogan.
“Every smartphone, every tablet, every laptop and crucially, every electric vehicle” needs it, he noted. “We can’t function on a day-to-day basis without cobalt, and three-fourths of the supply is coming out of the Congo. And it’s being mined in appalling, heart-wrenching, dangerous conditions.”
“By and large the world doesn’t know what’s happening," he continued. “...it just so happened that the Congo is sitting on more cobalt than the rest of the planet combined."
“Before anyone knew what was happening, [the] Chinese government [and] Chinese mining companies took control of almost all the big mines and the local population has been displaced,” he told Rogan.
“They dig in absolutely subhuman, gut-wrenching conditions for a dollar a day, feeding cobalt up the supply chain into all the phones, all the tablets, and especially electric cars.”
Meanwhile the report notes that the Biden administration recently "entered into an agreement with the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Zambia" to help bolster the supply of such materials, despite these issues.
You can listen to the full comments here:
https://youtu.be/CIWvk3gJ_7E
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/rogan-guest-goes-viral-after-exposing-subhuman-and-appalling-cobalt-mining-conditions-congoDon't forget to read the comments on the YouTube video. Here's another vid https://youtu.be/_V3bIzNX4co"With climate change hitting harder every year, businesses, governments, and individuals are increasingly embracing electric vehicles and wind, solar, and other renewable energy sources. While that’s great for the atmosphere, it’s hell on the Earth. “Green” power has an Achilles heel: It requires staggering amounts of natural resources. Manufacturing solar panels, wind turbines, and electric cars involves a kaleidoscopic array of materials, from copper and tin to exotic elements like neodymium. To meet the surging demand for all that “green” hardware, we’ll need to mine an additional 10 million tons of copper every year. We’ll need to dig up 20 times more cobalt and lithium than we do today. Gouging out those metals is creating its own set of human and environmental catastrophes, from children risking their lives in Congolese cobalt quarries to toxin-spewing rare earth mines in China."
https://pulitzercenter.org/projects/real-costs-green-energySeems there's no "win" with Green like we're being told. Sounds great, but that 20 cents to the dollar claim? We can put that to bed. It's a lie in the long term. THAT..... (The Rogan podcast) was Stark & Bleak. Won't see that story getting traction in the MSM. As horrible as those mines are, one of the biggest atrocities since the 1940s, 98.2% of people have smartphones and electric cars are "the answer", the are going to keep on digging.
|
