This is too rosy of a picture when it comes to cobalt. Wish that it were so.
Two thirds of the world's output is from the Congo. There have been multiple wars over the DRC because of its resources. That's at a large scale. At a small scale even today there are over 100 armed groups that control parts of the country to exploit it's resources and people. It was worse in the past. Many people including children work in "artisanal" mines that are horrific; these people are often modern day slaves.
While lithium production is overall much more mundane, cobalt is very harmful to the people who it should be benefitting.
Yea, but it's not really a problem with cobolt, it's a problem with Congo. And it's still a good trade compared to oil that finances all manner of stuff, like the Ukraine war, and international islamist terrorism. There's also less money all in all, which means if we replaced all oil production with lithium batteries, there would be less money total going into industry that is easily hijacked for these types of purposes.
Let's also remember that avocado production is being hijacked like this. It's in general dangerous to have an industry that can be easily controlled and managed as it can then be taken over by mafia/terrorism/autocrats. I don't think we should argue that high value agriculture like avocados should be banned :P
The problems in the Congo originated with colonialism [1], esp. King Leopold, and continued throughout the Cold War via the USofA's DoE proxy sourcing of very high grade uranium for nuclear weapons [2].
It's a region that has been actively destabilised by Europeans, Americans, and Russians since the scamble for Africa [3].
The Congo's rich natural resources, including uranium—much of the uranium used by the U.S. nuclear programme during World War II was Congolese, led to substantial interest in the region from both the Soviet Union and the United States as the Cold War developed.
> The problems in the Congo originated with colonialism
That's... overselling it I think. Congo wasn't a single stable and well managed state before colonialism. The Congo has been subject to the most horrible and incompetent management absolutely, but some parts of the world that have been through immense suffering has done very well and some have done very poorly. Just look at Korea!
Just blaming colonialism for everything is a bit racist honestly. It is saying that it's only whites that can change the situation and the native populations are not capable of steering their own actions.
I think there is something between the far right saying africans can't be trusted because [racism] and the (far?) left saying africans have no agency because [colonialist history].
> Congo wasn't a single stable and well managed state before colonialism.
I would like to hear more about this. Do you have a good source on the actual state of the pre colonial Congo basin not written by those who came to colonise?
> Just blaming colonialism for everything is a bit racist honestly.
Not everything .. but of course anyone familiar with, for example, the Belgian Congo and King Leopold will also be aware of how horrific those decades were.
> It is saying that it's only whites that can change the situation and the native populations are not capable of steering their own actions.
What I am saying is following a brutal generations long rule the local factions almost immediately had to contend with the two largest global super powers waging a bloody and secret proxy war to retain control over the richest highest grade uranium deposits on the planet. With money no object to provide guns, bribe warlords, sway oppositions, stage coups, etc I doubt any population could survive such outside pressure without being cleaved apart.
Well maybe. But look at Ethiopia, the only country in Africa never colonized. They aren't doing significantly better. I think the problems are much more complex and varied than just "the white man did it". It's dangerous to have that opinion if it's wrong, because wrong ideas lead to wrong solutions, which leads to prolonged suffering.
I don't think any of the indigenous tribes had developed writing so such evidence is probably not to be found. It would have to come from early colonizers writing down oral histories, and they were far more interested in oppression than preservation of culture.
What about the pre colonial kingdoms such as, say, the Kingdom of Luba with a million people in fishing, farming and metal-working communities paying taxes to their King?
Do you think that they, or their neighbouring kingdoms in the Congo basin, had any works similar to, say, the Ethiopian Kebra Nagast (a 14th Century work)?
The wars in the Congo were fought over Nickel and Diamonds. No one cared about Cobalt in most centuries. It was the shiny waste product of Nickel mines that sometimes artists enjoyed painting with. (Many blue paints use Cobalt. There are multiple reasons we associate the element Cobalt with "blue".) Even at the peak of the worst of Lithium Ion battery formulations "demand" for Cobalt almost all of it was sourced from Nickel mining "waste".
Which isn't to say that it isn't valid to talk about the conditions of mining Nickel and Diamonds, but people are always (in nearly every century) mining Nickel and Diamond. But blaming Cobalt (and in turn Lithium Ion batteries) for all of the worsts excesses of Nickel mines is a bit extreme. Cobalt is the "waste product". Nickel was always the primary reason for all the mining. (Nickel will likely always be the primary reason. Especially now as Lithium Ion formulations have mostly eliminated Cobalt in recent years.)
> The wars in the Congo were fought over Nickel and Diamonds
That's why I said the wars were over Congo's resources. Which by the way included its people and rubber.
> blaming Cobalt (and in turn Lithium Ion batteries)
I'm not blaming anyone.
I just reported the truth that there have been wars in the Congo over its resources and that there are armed groups that control its resources like cobalt today. The conditions of which are often horrific. Correcting the original who said cobalt mining is benign.
Cobalt can't be blamed, it's not alive.
If we're assigning blame, we should be blaming the Western corporate governance where it's trivial to whitewash where resources were extracted and how they were processed. If we insisted that our governments passed laws keeping corporations, and their executives, directly accountable, and requiring that they maintain a full chain of custody, then conditions on the ground in Congo would improve dramatically.
It's not nickel's fault, or the fault of diamonds, or that if electric cars or batteries. The fault is and has always been our own.
Two thirds of the world's output is from the Congo. There have been multiple wars over the DRC because of its resources. That's at a large scale. At a small scale even today there are over 100 armed groups that control parts of the country to exploit it's resources and people. It was worse in the past. Many people including children work in "artisanal" mines that are horrific; these people are often modern day slaves.
While lithium production is overall much more mundane, cobalt is very harmful to the people who it should be benefitting.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030142072...
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/02/01/1152893...