Bad Guys with Leverage

 

                     Bad Guys with Leverage

From an Issues and Insights editorial:


"The birthplace of most electric cars is the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country where the diamond trade has helped finance civil war. There, “slave labor” is feeding “big tech’s quest for cobalt,” an element used in the batteries that drive EVs.

“Our children are dying like dogs,” a Congolese mother whose son and cousin died while working in the Congo’s cobalt mines. She and others have filed a lawsuit in U.S. federal court that “insists companies are simply turning a blind eye to the egregious abuses that include children killed in tunnel collapses or losing limbs or suffering from other horrific injuries caused by mining accidents.”

The United Nations says that “nearly 50% of world cobalt reserves” are found in the Congo. But it’s not the only element needed to build “green” batteries. They require lithium, natural graphite, and manganese, raw materials that are “highly concentrated,” according to the U.N., “in a few countries.”

“Nearly 50% of world cobalt reserves are in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), 58% of lithium reserves are in Chile, 80% of natural graphite reserves are in China, Brazil and Turkey, while 75% of manganese reserves are in Australia, Brazil, South Africa and Ukraine,” says the U.N.

Look at the list again. What do some of those nations have in common? They are, the U.N. admits, “susceptible to disruption by political instability.” They also create by their Third World nature “social and environmental impacts” directly linked to “the extraction of raw materials for car batteries.”

The hypocrisy of the green movement emits a bad odor. The political left hates mining, but apparently only in the U.S., and maybe Canada. Seems that dirty mining is OK as long it’s out of sight. It’s the same with kids. “It’s for the children,” Democrats and progressives claim when their big-spending plans are challenged. Yet none on the left are calling for a halt to the green agenda until child slave labor has been eradicated from the supply chain."

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