Child miners aged four living a hell on Earth so YOU can drive an electric car

Child miners aged four at Congo cobalt mine | Daily Mail Online

Picking through a mountain of huge rocks with his tiny bare hands, the exhausted little boy makes a pitiful sight.
His name is Dorsen and he is one of an army of children, some just four years old, working in the vast polluted mines of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where toxic red dust burns their eyes, and they run the risk of skin disease and a deadly lung condition. Here, for a wage of just 8p a day, the children are made to check the rocks for the tell-tale chocolate-brown streaks of cobalt – the prized ingredient essential for the batteries that power electric cars.

 

Haven't we realized by now that liberal folks don't actually care about the misery that has to be endured in order for their lives to be made easier?

 

What makes you imagine this is a “liberal folk” issue rather than just a human one? Do you believe this kind of exploitive production and manufacture was only created after the invention of electric cars?

 

Who, currently are driving the consumption for cobalt? Which industries, and political party in the US are driving this? This isn't just about electric cars, it's about cell phones, laptops, anything with specific types of batteries. But, driving consumption is the electric car business. The massive increase in the need for cobalt to produce the batteries for the cars. Tesla et al, Ford, BMW, etc all have a reliance on the stone age industry of the DRC and the misery it creates. Feel better yet?

 

It's the left that claims electric cars are the answer to all our problems and it's the left that can't grasp the fact that these vehicles cause more problems than they cure

 

Actually I gather more cobalt is used in making alloys than for electronics and as you point out, there is a much wider range of uses for those electronics than the electric car industry. It’s a relevant factor but far, far from alone.

My other point was that cobalt mining is only one of countless production and manufacturing processes that abuse workers in this kind of way, creating many of the products and services that we all use every day without much of a thought for those workers. Overall, trying to spin this on to a single part of a particular industry, a single political party in a particular country or your perception of an imaginary political grouping is dishonest and unconstructive.

 

Sometimes, in my experience, calling the spade the spade is actually very honest, and constructive.

 

Yes, but you’re calling a shed a spade just because the shed probably has one or more spades inside.

 

The perhaps you're missing the point. Consider the massive increase in demand having to transition the global auto market to become electric. And while currently the matrix of distribution is relatively small, the emerging market estimates make this the top consumer across all market consumers for cobalt with as little as 10% adoption within the auto market. Given that many nations are advancing to fully electric vehicles by 2040, the demand side grows more, with estimates that the satisfaction of those national requirements driving vehicle battery consumption by itself to over 50% of the global consumption market.

 

No, I get the point, I’m just opening it up. This isn’t an electric car issue, it’s a modern consumerism one. Entirely dropping the idea of moving towards wider use of electric vehicles wouldn’t prevent the kind of problem highlighted by the OP, it would only shift when and where the impacts are. This kind of thing needs much more attention and effort to address, I just don’t think you’re approaching it from the right way to achieve that (if that was even your intent).

Maybe that would give the industry the kind of attention that would force improvements in how it operates? Again, given electric vehicles aren’t currently a massive proportion of the market but those miners are already suffering (and probably have been for much longer than you or I been aware of them), there are clearly plenty of other markets driving the problem. Why aren’t you laying the guilt trip on them too?

 

Well beats digging blood diamonds I suppose

 

What evidence that this is such case

 

Ok, fair point. There is misery today. Granted. And given the policy of the progressive/green movement, it just ensures more of it. You hope that the drive of demand generates sufficient controls? Seriously? Do you really suppose that the Chinese government cares at all about the living and working conditions of the child labor they employ today and in anyway would be motivated to correct it going forward? I would call that grossly wishful thinking. Of course, we could simply initiate a trade ban on imported batteries that use these mines, like blood diamonds. See how far that gets us. And when Tim Cook and Elon Musk start flaming the oped sections, you're going to be there to remind them of their social responsibilities, right?

 

This is just the latest illogical denier propaganda failure which all the of denier cultists were told to chant in unison. Last week, it was crying about Gore. It will be something new next week. If nothing else, deniers can brag they're reliable party apparatchiks.

It's sort of a defining conservative/libertarian thing, their adulation of conformity. They want everyone to have the "freedom" to think and act exactly as they do.

 

Production is bad enough but Electric cars produce just as much co2 once on the road anyway so what's the point?

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/electric-cars-are-not-necessarily-clean/

 

That’s the element you’ve not supported though. You’ve identified a single existing issue that could be increased as a result of one specific technology but not even considered any issues that could be reduced at the same time.

Not demand, attention. Ironically, nobody cared about the cobalt miners when they were just producing materials for aircraft engines but attention like this (however biased in intent) has the potential to force improvements in the industry, regardless of where the product is being used.

You’d ban the raw material rather than the finished products and that would be a ban across all uses, not just the politically unfavourable ones. That’s probably a factor in it having not happened already.

 

OP

If they didn't work they'd probably slowly starve to death? That's 'Africa'!