“Until this moment, I thought the ground in the Congo took its vermillion hue from the copper in the dirt, but now I cannot help but wonder whether the earth here is red because of all the blood that has spilled upon it.” – Cobalt Red
Following the lead of the European Union, seven US states have already committed to reducing the number of gas-powered cars beginning in 2035. At that time, automakers and dealerships must sell only electric vehicles (EVs), for the express purpose of combating climate change. In 2022, less than six percent of new car sales were EVs, likely due to their higher costs, limits on range, and lack of infrastructure for recharging the EV battery. Lesser-known concerns include the added energy needed to produce EVs in the first place, along with a significant reliance on fossil fuels to keep them charged and on the road. And to what avail? A Wall Street Journal study found that global emissions would be reduced by a mere 0.18 if all gas cars were replaced with EVs.
President Biden wasted little time in driving up the cost of gasoline when he shuttered the Keystone pipeline on his first day in office. Then by enacting tax credits for the purchase of EVs, the Democrats aided in an artificial increase in their popularity. In 2010, there were a mere 17,000 electric vehicles in the world; by 2021, the number was 16 million. Driven mostly by environmental policies and fears of unsubstantiated climate catastrophe, the political shift to electric was being done to help aid climate goals. Yet, every EV battery produced can require as much as 60 percent refined cobalt, an element necessary in the stabilization of the battery, allowing it to hold more charge and extend the driving range. And the only place to go if you need cobalt is the Congo, a country both blessed and cursed by its abundance of minerals.
In Siddharth Kara’s 2023 book, “Cobalt Red”, Kara reveals the trillion-dollar mining industry that is focused on the Central African copper belt in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) which currently produces nearly 70 percent of the world supply of cobalt, a necessary ingredient in both lithium-ion rechargeable batteries and electric car batteries. Kara, a human rights activist, focused on modern-day slavery, child labor, and human trafficking, conducted his own research on the conditions of artisanal mining in the Congo and found that the growing demand for these minerals has created a catastrophic human rights and environmental tragedy. Yet, despite the DRC’s abundance of the much-needed cobalt, the country ranks 175 out of 189 on the UN Human Development Index, with 75 percent of Congolese living below the poverty line, with a life expectancy of barely 60. And despite the trillions in wealth coming from the mines, local communities lack electricity, clean water, and proper sanitation with schools and medical services often miles away.
Unfortunately, the mineral-laden Congo has a long history of exploitation whether it was ivory, palm oil, diamonds, timber, or rubber. Colonialism first attracted King Leopold, and the Belgian government, who quickly took advantage of the riches lying under the earth, before Congo’s own rogue leaders eventually replaced them. Officials in the Congolese government became rich by offering excavating rights to mining companies in exchange for a percentage of the revenues as well as through the auctioning of land for fees, royalties, and taxes, with nearly 75 percent of the government’s budget dependent on mining. But even their private plunder is only the beginning of the problem. As cobalt advances up the supply chain, several middlemen also take their shares of the cobalt grift before it is eventually shipped to China for the final refining process. Sadly, those who lose the most are the artisanal miners who dig for cobalt with little more than their hands while being paid a paltry wage of barely a dollar a day.
In the Congo, the extreme ends of the mineral processing of strategic metals produce trillions at the top, and pennies at the bottom, with Big Tech, the mining companies, Congolese officials, and the end user on one side, and poor artisanal workers on the other. Informal artisanal miners are not only needed to help with demand, but their contributions to the supply chain are untraceable and are provided at a very low cost to the mining company. Artisanal miners can extract cobalt at ten to fifteen grades higher than industrial miners who dig with machines and not hands.
Not only do artisanal miners work for slave labor wages, an amount insufficient to support their families, but they are also regularly subjected to accidents and injuries, toxic contaminations that affect their health, and the death of several thousand per year. They suffer high rates of birth defects, stillbirths, and miscarriages, as well as respiratory diseases and cancer. Poverty and low wages keep artisanal workers digging for minerals in areas where few other options are available. Today, 40 million artisanal miners are working in 80 countries around the world, most with little to no tools, little to no protective gear, and in hazardous conditions. These low-status workers represent 90 percent of the world’s total mining workforce and are currently producing more than 30 percent of cobalt supplies for first-world electronics and EV batteries.
Mining began as a necessary evil when coal mining was used to power the rise of the Industrial Revolution. Over time, however, the increase in wealth created opportunities to not only improve the conditions for people around the world but also to create the technology that brought safer and cleaner ways to extract needed resources. While mineral mining is powering the growth of technological and electronic innovation, thus far, there have been little to no improvements for artisanal miners who are an essential factor in providing critical supplies to first-world consumers.
There is much irony between climate change rhetoric and the degradation of the environment that cobalt demands bring to the DRC. Expanding mines causes deforestation, air pollution, contamination of lakes and rivers, and destruction of arable land. Its workers are thrust into slave labor conditions, child labor, sexual assault, and even rape. Yet, the political push for EVs is expected to drive demand for cobalt by 600 percent over the next 10 years, dragging more and more Congolese into the never-ending cycle of poverty and serfdom, where a poor few forfeit their lives for the luxury of the many. Democrats may need to rethink their mantra of clean energy at any cost.
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