The conditions for people who mine the cobalt needed for electric car batteries are horrific. Joe Rogan used his recent podcast to shine a light on it. He invited activist Siddharth Kara to talk about what happens at these African mines, specifically in the Congo.
It will make you sick.
“Throughout the whole history of slavery, I mean, going back centuries, never, never in human history has there been more suffering that generated more profit, and was linked to the lives of more people around the world, ever, ever in history than what’s happening in the Congo right now,” Kara said.
“And the reason I say that is this: the cobalt that’s being mined in the Congo is in every single lithium-ion rechargeable battery manufactured in the world today, every smartphone, every tablet, every laptop, and crucially, every electric vehicle.”
Kara said conditions are so bad that people are forced at gunpoint to dig for these materials by hand.
“Cobalt really took off about 10-12 years ago,” he said. “And it’s in another part of the country in the mining provinces in the southeast of the Congo. And cobalt took off because it started to be used in lithium-ion batteries to maximize their charge and stability.”
He added that the Congo “is sitting on more cobalt than the rest of the planet combined.” Then there are the gold and diamonds to be mined.
“And it’s in a small little patch of the Congo, southeastern corner — a part that used to be called Katanga, and before anybody knew what was happening, Chinese government, Chinese mining companies took control of almost all the big mines, and the local population has been displaced, is under duress, and they dig in absolutely subhuman, gut-wrenching conditions for $1 a day, feeding cobalt up the supply chain into all the phones, all the tablets, and especially electric cars.”
The CCP controls most of the world’s cobalt and they’re slavers, human rights’ abusers.
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