SUMMARY:
The poor people
of Chile and
The Congo
need reliable,
cheap electricity,
and free markets,
not their children
slaving and dying
in cobalt mines !
DETAILS:
Demand for rechargeable
car batteries is predicted
to rise 700% in the next
four years.
But even at current levels,
children are already dying
in mines in the Congo,
and farmers in Chile
are being forced
off their land.
The UN is now
“concerned” about
a car battery boom,
which it helped create.
…a new report from UNCTAD,
warns that the raw materials
used in electric car batteries,
are highly concentrated
in a small number of countries,
which raises concerns.
…two-thirds of all cobalt
production happens in the
Democratic Republic
of the Congo (DRC).
According the
UN Children’s
Fund (UNICEF),
about 20 per cent
of cobalt supplied
from the DRC
comes from
artisanal mines,
where human
rights abuses
have been reported,
and up to 40,000
children work in
extremely dangerous
conditions, for very
ittle income.
In Chile,
lithium mining uses
nearly 65% of the water
in the country’s Salar
de Atamaca region,
one of the driest desert
areas in the world,
to pump out brines
from drilled wells.
This has forced local quinoa
farmers and llama herders
to migrate and abandon
ancestral settlements.
It has also contributed
to environment degradation,
landscape damage and soil
contamination, groundwater
depletion and pollution.
The UN’s
(non) "answer"
is to "hope"
people will find
other deposits
of cobalt and
lithium, in some
other countries.
And they "hope"
some people
will figure out
how to recycle
old car batteries
And they "hope"
someone will invent
new batteries
that use different
materials.
Meanwhile.
the lives of
black children
in The Congo
do not matter !
Former child laborer
Yannick, from Kolwezi,
a city of over
500,000 people,
in the south of the DRC,
dropped out of school
for full-time work
at the age of seven.
“People died in the mine,
and you could suffocate
when you are deep
in the mine,”
he said.
“When it rained,
it created a lot
of landslides."
IEA Executive Director
Fatih Birol said that in 2018,
electric cars saved
40 million tons of CO2
worldwide, sufficient
to reduce global average
temperatures by a mere
0.000018°C —
or a little more than
a hundred-thousandth
of a degree Celsius
— by the end
of the century !
“If you think you can save
the climate with electric cars,
you’re completely wrong,”
Birol said.
Electric Vehicles use more
fossil fuels than normal cars,
for their construction
( including battery manufacturing )
and use, unless you live
in France where most electricity
comes from nuclear power.
Electric cars are already
causing minor grid failures
in a few upmarket streets
in Australia, and they
only have about 5,000
of them in the whole country.
Each new fast-charging car
is equivalent to adding 20
new homes to the
electric grid.