Joe Rogan & Siddharth Kara discuss the insane contains that the people in the Congo face while mining Cobalt. These companies say it is properly done with safety equipment and with people of the proper age, but that has been exposed. There is a percentage of this cobalt in every battery there is no way to avoid it. How can we fix these situations? What are you thoughts? Comment below
Siddharth Kara is an author and expert on modern-day slavery, human trafficking, and child labor. Look for his new book, “Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives,” on January 31, 2023.
Joe Rogan Experience #1914
The legacy media is presumably afraid of the Chinese. King Leopold must be spinning in his grave
This has been known about for years (decades). Maybe this will give the issue some traction and visibility but, I doubt it.
It would take those who control the message boards i.e. The NYTimes, ABNBCBS, Ms/CNN and their Social Media Toadies, that reach the The leftwing of the Country, that being half the country which includes 80% of Democrats, who make up Cancel Culture and Faux-outrage to let that message out into the open air to breath. So your doubt, SMC, is well founded.
left wing media like UK Guardian and Washington Post had covered this story before
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/nov/08/cobalt-drc-miners-toil-for-30p-an-hour-to-fuel-electric-cars
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/02/21/demand-congos-cobalt-is-rise-so-is-scrutiny-mining-practices/
So the question is where do you think Rogan gest his storys from ?
Partly correct. The child labor is in the illegal artisanal cobalt mining. But that ‘only’ accounts for about 35-40% of Congo output (since illegal, nobody really knows), itself about 80% of world cobalt output. The Congo rest is large legal copper strip mines where cobalt is a byproduct. And EV battery cathodes are hardly the only use of cobalt. High temp steel alloys in all jet engine hot end turbine blades are another big user. But nobody lobbies to ban jet engines because of cobalt child slave labor.
Let’s not get carried away. Is it bad—yes. Is Joe Rogan ‘right’—no.
Do not disagree. Commented here on that problem several times previously, based on Tesla battery recycling success to date. Copper, aluminum, and nickel are not a problem. But lithium and cobalt still are.
Yes. There’s a tradition of artisanal mining in the region going back centuries, they were doing it for copper when the Europeans first arrived.
The large scale modern style mining is new and not really a concern, unless you hate industrial mining.
Making a bad situation worse is not really a solution.
In the Roman empire only 40% of food was produced by slaves and the produce was also fed to animals. Not so bad, therefore, let’s not get carried away.
Notice that Tesla shareholders have caught a hell of a cold this year. Why, I wonder?
The morally superior libtard leftists will conveniently look the other way….
No need Paul, they that one blind eye which mitigates them having to give away their hypocrisy much of the time and can just keep on with the groupthink talk without a break.
So the solution, once the faux guilt and horror subside, is (duh!) to use tractors instead of humans. Unclear why (and how) so many people are used instead of machinery.
Maybe it’s a ‘Jobs Program’.
https://youtu.be/RWsx1X8PV_A
If it was a jobs program, they’d be using spoons instead of shovels.
(H/T to Milton Friedman.)
Because the artisanal miners are working in abandoned mines where the grade of the remaining ore is too low to mine profitably (Pay for the diesel fuel!), or the deposit was too small to invest in the infrastructure. Poor people who had no other way of earning cash moved in voluntarily to be able to feed themselves and their family by picking out the leftovers.
On the money Clyde – in South Africa we have the “Zama-Zamas” who mine old workings illegally in extemely dangerous conditions and many deaths occur.
https://www.groundup.org.za/article/lethal-toll-informal-gold-mining/
And gangsterism flourishes in illegal operations – which probably doubles the death toll in “turf war” shootings.
Again no one really knows….
People who are desperate often do dangerous things. If there were alternative opportunities to earn more money with less personal risk, I’m sure people would jump at it. Those who are concerned about the welfare of the artisanal miners should do something besides whine, and push to develop alternatives for the poor.
Why TF is the word “artisanal” used? Can we at least say “laborers” instead, and not give these people airs? Or are some pounding rock with a unique craftsman strike?
“Artisanal: produced in limited quantities by an artisan through the use of traditional methods”
Merriam-Webster
Excellent point; “artisnal” is a great obfuscator.
When it’s making Western products like clothes or foods it’s good ?
If someone makes Harris Tweed cloth as a cottage industry product , it’s somehow superior .
The artisanal copper mines in the region were already there when European settlers first arrived. They even used copper small crosses as money .
Just wishing traditional production away because it no longer follows modern norms _but along side the industrial scale production- won’t have any effect.
Artisanal implies self-employed versus someone being paid by an employer.
The Democrat half of America will never read this. Their google lord will ensure it’s hard to find. Joe Rogan has been painted as a MAGA extreme by the establishment media.
It’s not that they don’t care. They would be horrified to know what their leaders know. It’s that they genuinely believe that everything worth reading is in the NYT and is televised on CNN and recounted on NPR. Nothing else exists.
I think, from glimmers I’m hearing from my friends on the left, that they are beginning to suspect that they aren’t hearing important news. It’s only a start, though.
I’m hoping that center-left media people, trying as hard as they can to be fair, finally take on the climate issue. It’s the last one, really – the one they won’t touch. But they’ve done a good job with other issues.
Ah no . Washington Post and other major outlets have covered it before.
It’s you that has the blinkers on and following a twat like Rogan ,who seems to get his info from the major media anyway.
“I’m hoping that center-left media people, trying as hard as they can to be fair, finally take on the climate issue.”
I don’t think there is a center-left media. I can’t think of one example. We have pure leftwing propaganda from the Mainstream Media all the time. No moderates allowed.
The facts are the Mainstream Media is the most dangerous organization in the Western world. It is they who mislead the People and cause them to do foolish, destructive things like voting for radical Democrats/Communists.
Thats what happens with privately owned media ….you run it your way.
Does Murdoch media follow his ‘direction’ for his newspapers and Fox news.
Of course it does. never been any different even back in the Hearst media days or any other big media owned by families.
The Sulzbergers run the NY Times to suit them like Murdoch does with Fox news.
Why is it a problem?
Lies are a problem. Especially for those people/societies who can’t tell the difference between a lie and the truth.
The charging issues are beginning to come to notice like scum on the surface of a liquid. The higher wealth individuals, being the majority owners of EVs, are reporting the difficulties.
One info source: Partially Charged Cars – EPautos – Libertarian Car Talk (ericpetersautos.com)
The “up in flames” issues has to be solved (likely will). Just recently a charging hoverboard caused an apartment fire in Wash. D. C. Thus, the lower wealth folks are noticing.
Hoverboard sparks flames; Firefighters save cats in DC (fox5dc.com)
This was on the ground floor of a 2-story building. There are too many of these incidents to be ignored.
As Rud suggests, the mining issue isn’t likely to cause our elites to notice. A fire in their garage or apartment will get their attention.
At a motorway services not very far from my old stomping ground..
https://metro.co.uk/2022/12/28/six-hour-queues-show-what-its-really-like-owning-a-tesla-at-christmas-18004669/
And when you’ve made it as far as Tebay, certainly for England, you really are on a mountainside in ‘the middle of nowhere’
(They have a lovely pond with some very tame ducks and massively overpriced & pretentious food in the restaurant and Farm Shop, but that’s it)
Simples. Print stickers with:
’Proudly powered by Child Labour’
and attach to every EV in your neighbourhood.
You could add “Proudly powered by Slave Labor” by including the Chinese Uyghurs. Those EV’s must be getting some of that slave solar power.
In fact, a lot of us who don’t drive EV’s are getting some of that slave solar power.
Cobalt mining has been around for a very long time, given that it has always had a wide variety of industrial uses (It’s used in cutting and grinding tools, pigments and paints, colored glass, surgical implants, batteries, and some electroplating). Ever shop at Home Depot and seen “Kobalt” products – a play on the name cobalt reflecting that cobalt is used in drill bits, saw blades and anything else that requires hardened steel.
Attempting to blame whatever happens in a particular nation on only one of the demands for this widely useful metal is a silly attempt to appear virtuous on a matter that you otherwise absolutely never gave a shit before. Like all those poor birds dying in wind turbines – all couple of hundred thousand of them per year, while 50 billion birds die every year due to flying into building windows, moving vehicles, house cat predation, and just the fact that birds have very short lifespans to begin with.
“50 billion birds die ….flying into windows” Really? No, any criticism of FF or “Nook-lee-er” means any green method must be examined. Lithium is being sent to landfills….I look around and see 6 small lithium batteries on my desk that one day will go into the garbage. Lithium batteries are not the future…that’s for sure.
“Ever shop at Home Depot and seen “Kobalt” products”
Actually, no. Kobalt is a Lowes brand. 😎
The Pulitzer Prize nominated book that I co-authored “Clean Energy Exploitations” brings transparency to the environmental and humanity abuses that support “clean” energy. Ronald Stein
Modern mining uses methods that provide profits and occupations for a few. Other people may be left to scrabble for an existence under unsafe or unhealthy conditions. The answer is most definitely not to stop the use of cobalt or lithium. Starvation kills rather quickly, as well.
Ending the cycle of poverty,the real cause of much human exploitation, should be the priority.
It is obvious that not one person commenting actually listened to the interview. I did. Your preconceptions, offered as wisdom, are not wise, nor are the accurate. Listen, then comment. Otherwise you are much closer to Griff than you’d care to be thought.
PBH
I guess you are referring to the guest’s direct statements that (a) every conventional cobalt mine he visited has areas within its site where the manual laborers work and (b) that he has visited nearly all of the conventional cobalt mines. From that he can plausibly assert that there is “no clean cobalt.”
His contentions seem like they could be rather easily tested. And that this industry, so concentrated in area, could rather easily be properly monitored/audited/policed. And that a half-dozen pieces of second-hand construction machinery could easily duplicate the productive output of the mob of laborers shown in the video.
The part that no one wants to deal with is this is one of the ways a primitive society literally digs its way out of poverty. I would prefer this happens differently, but that is western concept of comfort not a moral or economic one. If this is forced, coerced or involuntary labor that is more a governmental problem.