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Mines Linked to Child Labor Are Thriving in Rush for Car Batteries (bloomberg.com)
Metal vital to many electric vehicles has tripled in 18 months. From a report: The appetite for electric cars is driving a boom in small-scale cobalt production in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where some mines have been found to be dangerous and employ child labor. Production from so-called artisanal mines probably rose by at least half last year, according to the estimates of officials at three of the biggest international suppliers of the metal, who asked not to be named because they're not authorized to speak on the matter. State-owned miner Gecamines estimates artisanal output accounted for as much as a quarter of the country's total production in 2017. That's a concern for carmakers from Volkswagen to Tesla, who are seeking to secure long-term supplies of the battery ingredient but don't want to be enmeshed in a scandal about unethical mining practices.
Tech giants including Apple and Microsoft endured bad publicity after a 2016 Amnesty International report said children were being sent down some Congolese mines to dig for cobalt destined for their gadgets. Pit and tunnel collapses killed dozens of workers in 2015, the advocacy group said. Cobalt has tripled in value in the last 18 months as the rise of electric vehicles intensifies competition for scarce resources. Two-thirds of the world's supply comes from Congo, the second-poorest nation. The boom in the metal, currently trading above $80,000 a metric ton, has triggered more mining in the cobalt-rich Katanga region, where sprawling hand-dug mines dot the landscape, and searching for ore is as commonplace as farming.
Tech giants including Apple and Microsoft endured bad publicity after a 2016 Amnesty International report said children were being sent down some Congolese mines to dig for cobalt destined for their gadgets. Pit and tunnel collapses killed dozens of workers in 2015, the advocacy group said. Cobalt has tripled in value in the last 18 months as the rise of electric vehicles intensifies competition for scarce resources. Two-thirds of the world's supply comes from Congo, the second-poorest nation. The boom in the metal, currently trading above $80,000 a metric ton, has triggered more mining in the cobalt-rich Katanga region, where sprawling hand-dug mines dot the landscape, and searching for ore is as commonplace as farming.
I used to think that Slashdot's rating system was kind of wonky, but I grew to accept it. I still think it has issues.
But one think they could do is allow us to filter out ACs as 90% of what they post is unmitigated fucking shit.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Don't get me wrong, children working in mines is horrible. However, they are working there because the alternatives are worse. Closing down these mines or sacking the children will not make their situation better, it will make it massively worse.
Of course, that is too complex a situation for the media and for many people. Hence they demand that child labor be stopped and are thereby contributing to the evil.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Math: ((10000 + 20000) / 2) / (86923 / (2/3)) = 11,5% of the world supply from artisinal mines.
Most artisinal mines are just villages digging their own land to try to get some extra income to lift themselves out of the country's crippling poverty (as the wealth from the big mines has failed to trickle down to ordinary people). But some percentage of artisinal mines will be abusive; call that fraction P. So P * 0,115 = will be the fraction of the global supply that is troublesome and needs to be dealt with. Dealing with it, however, is difficult when there's so much profit to be had by unscrupulous suppliers slipping artisinal cobalt into their supply streams.
Of course, it's not present production that matters. It's future production. Where's that coming from? In the short term, there will be even more from the DRC - albeit in new large mines. Katanga just reopened. 2018 production is anticipated at 11k tonnes per year, and 34k tonnes per year in 2019. Also, Metalkol will start production late this year, ramping up to 14k tonnes per year by 2019.
In the longer term, however production looks to be moving away from the DRC. While cobalt deposits are crazy-abundant in the DRC (cobalt prices could fall to near zero and they'd still produce it as a byproduct of their copper production), today's prices support production all over the world. Eg., in Australia the Skoni project will start in the 2020s, while among the many plays in Canada, First Cobalt is the most interest (near the aptly named town of Cobalt). But it's not just new mines; a lot will be from adding secondary recovery streams to existing mines, like the $500M Vale nickel mine at Voisey’s Bay. Cobalt can be found pretty much everywhere that nickel and copper can be found , but most mines haven't bothered recovering it because of how cheaply it's been coming out of the DRC. But while that will meet short-term demand, the long term is to focus more on mining "cobalt for cobalt's sake", rather than simply as a byproduct. And that'll be the case until the supply curve catches up with the demand curve and prices slack off.
Even mines right "next door" to the Tesla Gigafactory, like Lovelock mine in Nevada, may be opening in a couple years. It's a boom time for the cobalt market.
Point of interest. Offering to shoot us might not work so well as an incentive as you might imagine.
I wonder what percentage of the cobalt in that mine is Cobalt-60. That's some particularly nasty shit with a 7.8MeV photon decay and a half-life of 5.27 years. They probably will die of cancer much faster than global climate consequences.
Wow, you started the paragraph admitting you don't know shit, and yet by the end you've concluded the horrible death of the children.
Congo is sliding back into civil war. The last war there killed more than 4 million people, and was the world's deadliest conflict since WW2. Nearly all the casualties were civilians.
In the last few weeks, fighting has flared up along the eastern border with Uganda and Rwanda. Thousands have died. The world has ignored it.
Yet suddenly the media starts pretending to give a crap about the Congolese because they can put "Apple" and "Tesla" in the headline.
This isn't a complex situation. This isn't the 1800s let alone the 1600s. There is zero reason these kids are being sent to the mines. The alternatives are worse because the foreign policy of the leading nations makes it worse. You're just telling yourself (and everyone else) this clap trap to make yourself feel better about not solving the problem.
It comes down to this quote
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