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posted by janrinok on Monday June 07 2021, @06:38PM   Printer-friendly

Electric Car Batteries Are Turning This Country Into an Actual Hellscape:

As the demand for gadgets and electric cars grows, so too are the mining operations that dig up cobalt to use in lithium-ion batteries.

And that's become a serious problem for the Democratic Republic of the Congo, The New Yorker reports, which sits atop about 3.4 million metric tons of the stuff — half of the entire planet's supply. A massive, gold rush-like mining industry was born after residents in poverty-stricken areas discovered ore deposits under their homes. But now, many are finding that digging up the valuable mineral has failed to lift them out of poverty. And meanwhile, dangerous conditions are killing miners as exposure to the metal is poisoning both people and the environment.

A lack of regulations and enforcement over the mines has resulted in the miners, who risk their health and safety for financial security, being exploited by officials and traders who are unscrupulously lining their own pockets, according to The New Yorker. One miner told the publication that he now struggles to pay his $25 monthly rent even as the value of cobalt continues to soar — and the only alternative was to work at a major corporation's mine for considerably less money.

Meanwhile, thousands of children have been put to work as well, according to The New Yorker, some of whom say they can't remember the last time they could afford a meal. In order to keep them working, the kids are often even drugged with appetite suppressors.


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  • (Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 08 2021, @01:19AM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 08 2021, @01:19AM (#1142984)

    If the outside world doesn't buy goods from black Africa, then they are screwing poor Africa. If they DO buy goods from black Africa, then they are screwing Africa. Let's just admit that black Africa is hopeless.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 08 2021, @04:43AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 08 2021, @04:43AM (#1143031)

    Not hopeless. Not helpless either. Dysfunctional, certainly, and taken advantage of by the rest of the world, but there is still hope left for them.

  • (Score: 2) by r_a_trip on Tuesday June 08 2021, @11:11AM

    by r_a_trip (5276) on Tuesday June 08 2021, @11:11AM (#1143090)

    Isn't that the problem with all manner of well intentioned but ill informed laymen "solutions" to large scale world problems?

    Multinational exploits workers in country X. "Boycott Multinational now!" Multinational leaves country X to end backlash over exploitation. "Yay, X isn't exploited anymore!" Country X is now also one Multinational short of previously inflowing economic activity, which might have been barely enough, but at least it was there. Economic situation worsens and local people are left holding the bag over feel good, first world activism.

    Everyone wants the world to pay living wages, but no one wants to pick up the tab when buying stuff.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 08 2021, @03:07PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 08 2021, @03:07PM (#1143150)

    There are lots of other fun options for no-win situations.

    If $Rich_country allows immigrants from $African_shithole then they're obviously fostering a braindrain/capital flight/multinational exploitation. If they don't then they're obviously racist colonialists dooming Africa's best and brightest to a life of exploitation and isolation.

    Case in point: UK and Canada cheerfully importing lots of doctors, nurses and so on to prop up their own understaffed and misallocated public health schemes, thereby picking over places like Zimbabwe, South Africa, Pakistan and so on. The joke (if you can call it that) was that any briton could go to a british hospital to be operated on by a south african surgeon and attended by a zimbabwean nurse.

    Yay, Africa! So great even the africans are sick of it!