The toxic truth behind “green energy” technologies, cobalt, and the exploitation of the Congo
If there’s a hell, it’s a teenage mother with a sick child strapped to her back, breaking rocks and putting them into a sack while she and her baby breathe in toxic dust. If she’s lucky, she’ll make a dollar or two and they will buy something to eat. They will both be dead in less than a year.
This is not a dystopian fantasy. This is the reality for an artisan cobalt miner in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). She is the one who gathers the minerals needed so you can recharge your smartphone, your laptop, your headphones, and your shiny electric vehicle.
Though manufacturers will tell us they source their cobalt only from ethical mines, that is a myth. The DRC has by far the richest cobalt mines in the world, and they are linked to the supply lines bringing the materials needed to make our batteries.
I thought I had seen the worst of human suffering when I lived in the DRC in the early 1990s. At that time, the region now producing cobalt was known for its copper production. The riches from these largely industrial mines lined the pockets of the American puppet dictator, Joseph Mobutu Sese Seko, while his people lived in squalor.
For the rest of this column: https://troymedia.com/environment/inconvenient-truth-green-energy-is-the-colour-of-congolese-blood/