With most of the exotic minerals and metals to build EV batteries being mined in developing countries, is it ethical to support the environmental degradation and humanity atrocities occurring in developing countries?
Published June 7, 2022, at CFACT https://www.cfact.org/2022/06/07/is-it-ethical-to-purchase-a-lithium-battery-powered-ev/
By Ronald Stein Pulitzer Prize nominated author, and Policy advisor for The Heartland Institute on Energy
With numerous State Governor’s having issued executive orders to phase out the purchasing of gasoline driven cars within the next decade or so, and the automobile manufacturers efforts to phase into only manufacturing EV’s here’s some food for thought about the lack of transparency about “Clean Energy Exploitations”.
For an oil well, where 100 percent organic material is pumped out of the ground, taking up around 500 to 1000 square feet. Then it flows in pipelines safely transporting the oil to refineries to be manufactured into usable oil derivatives that are the basis of more than 6,000 products for society, andintotransportation fuels needed by the world’s heavy-weight and long-range infrastructures of aviation, merchant ships, cruise ships, and militaries.
For just one lithium supply mine where entire mountains are eliminated. Each mine usually consists of thirty-five to forty humongous 797 Caterpillar haul trucks along with hundreds of other large equipment. Each 797 uses around half a million gallons of diesel a year. So, with an inventory of just thirty-five the haul trucks alone are using 17.5 million gallons of fuel a year for just one lithium site.
There is virtually no existing transparency of the environmental degradation and the human rights abuses occurring in developing countries with yellow, brown, and black skinned people. Both human rights abuses and environmental degradation are directly connected to the mining for the exotic minerals and metals that are required to manufacture wind turbines, solar panels, and EV batteries.
Today, a typical EV battery weighs one thousand pounds. It contains twenty-five pounds of lithium, sixty pounds of nickel, 44 pounds of manganese, 30 pounds cobalt, 200 pounds of copper, and 400 pounds of aluminium, steel, and plastic. Inside are over 6,000 individual lithium-ion cells.
It should concern you that all those toxic components come from mining. For instance, to manufacture each EV auto battery, you must process 25,000 pounds of brine for the lithium, 30,000 pounds of ore for the cobalt, 5,000 pounds of ore for the nickel, and 25,000 pounds of ore for copper. All told, you dig up 500,000 pounds of the earth’s crust for just one battery.
The current fossil fuel infrastructure is less invasive than mining for the exotic minerals and metals required to create the batteries needed to store “green energy”. In developing countries, these mining operations exploit child labor, and are responsible for the most egregious human rights’ violations of vulnerable minority populations. These operations are also directly destroying the planet through environmental degradation. The 2022 Pulitzer Prize nominated book “Clean Energy Exploitations – Helping Citizens Understand the Environmental and Humanity Abuses That Support Clean Energy, does an excellent job of discussing the lack of transparency to the world of the green movement’s impact upon humanity.
How many environmentalists are going to support lithium mines in America? There are two things needed to make the EV technology work for the billions of lightweight cars:
- Get the mining practices for these exotic minerals and metals to the point that they are acceptable to the environmental movement and stop the environmental degradation and humanity atrocities occurring in developing countries where people are being exploited with yellow, brown, and black skin.
- Further development of battery technology to somewhat clone how phones have been reduced in “size” with smaller and smaller batteries and increased capabilities in those small phones and reduce the alarming tendency of lithium batteries and their charging sources from spontaneously catching fire without warning.
Since you’ve probably read about EV fires, here’s a site that keeps tabs just on TESLA EV fires https://www.tesla-fire.com/, now at 85 and growing almost daily.
So, the next time you are thinking about purchasing an electric vehicle, or driving your EV car, before congratulating yourselves on saving the environment, remember that it came at a cost of entire mountains in developing countries, thousands of square miles of land and billions of gallons of oil and fuel.
We should all know that an electric vehicle battery does not “make” electricity – it only stores electricity produced elsewhere, primarily by coal, uranium, natural gas-powered plants, and occasionally by intermittent breezes and sunshine. So, to say an EV is a zero-emission vehicle is not at all valid as 80 percent of the electricity generated to charge the batteries is from coal, natural gas, and nuclear.
- twenty percent of the electricity generated in the U.S is from coal-fired plants, it follows that twenty percent of the EVs on the road are coal-powered.
- forty percent of the electricity generated in the U.S is from natural gas, it follows that forty percent of the EVs on the road are natural gas-powered.
- twenty percent of the electricity generated in the U.S is from nuclear, it follows that twenty percent of the EVs on the road are nuclear-powered.
Life Without Oil is NOT AS SIMPLE AS YOU MAY THINK as renewable energy is only intermittent electricity from breezes and sunshine as NEITHER wind turbines nor solar panels can manufacture anything for society. Climate change may impact humanity but being mandated to live without the products manufactured from oil will necessitate lifestyles being mandated back to the horse and buggy days of the 1800’s and could be the greatest threat to civilization’s eight billion residents.
America’s obsession for green electricity to reduce emissions must be ethical and should not thrive off human rights and environmental abuses in the foreign countries providing the exotic minerals and metals to support America’s green passion. Check out the quick 7-minute video interview between Ronald Stein and Rick Amato on “Your America TV” about The Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) movement to divest in fossil fuels, that may be leading society back to the decarbonized world of the 1800’s and before.
So, before your next vehicle purchase, be knowledgeable that most of the exotic minerals and metals to build EV batteries are being mined in developing countries.
EV buyers should be aware that they may be contributing to the pursuit of “blood minerals” to achieve their efforts to go green. If you feel comfortable supporting the environmental degradation and humanity atrocities occurring in those developing countries, then proceed with your purchase.
Ronald Stein, P.E.
Ambassador for Energy & Infrastructure
http://www.energyliteracy.net/
I do not understand the point of this article.
We all know that environmentalists do NOT oppose oil and support electric cars in logical grounds. They follow these beliefs because they are told to, and because all their friends are doing so. And because anyone who doesn’t follow them is evil and must be cancelled.
All you are doing g here is wasting your time providing the environmentalists with another article to smear. They will take your words, twist them, re-interpret them and then claim that you are rebutted.
I cannot see any way to stop this madness beyond letting it have its course and plunge some section of the World into complete collapse. Just hope that this happens somewhere else first….
If environmentalists truly believed their nonsense they would stop using electricity in all forms, grow their own food and make their own clothes
But they don’t, so instead they lecture the rest of us on how to mend our evil ways.
Yes, some individuals stop doing stupid things through learned experience. For whatever reason, learning from history or from other’s experiences seems to be at a minimum these days.
Reminds me of the electric fence analogy.
The Tide Pod challenge is not dead yet.
Learning from their own experience seems to be at a minimum too.
“Just hope that this happens somewhere else first….”
Too late, the miscreants pulling Biden’s puppet strings are hell bent on insuring that America is the first to collapse. They’ve done a pretty thorough job of sending us down a path towards self destruction and the resulting collapse has already started.
sadly America is ensuring its own collapse, through guns and drugs and extremist politics, lack of infrastructure investment and lack of decent health care.
Well you can always move to Venezuela, or Cuba, or Nigeria or so many other places that are not(?) ensuring their own collapse? Or we can get conservatives back running the country and make things right again.
UK banned knives. Next, they’ll ban the most dreaded Comfy Chair!
@griff
Pots and kettles
Video that lays bare huge A&E waits ‘being fuelled by GPs’: Nurse tells patients they face 13-HOUR wait amid warnings millions are showing up at casualty departments because they can’t see a GP
Daily Mail UK
In 2021, London recorded the highest number of teenage homicides caused by knife and gun crimes in modern times. That year, the UK’s capital saw the murders of some 30 male teenagers aged between 14 and 19
Funny how it’s only health care when the government provides it. By all measures, health care in the US is one of the best in the world.
Funny how the guy who touts communism, thinks mere socialism is so extreme.
As to the rest of your ill-informed rant, I just consider the source and ignore it.
Health Care in the US might be one of the best in the world but it is also the most expensive by far. Average costs per person in the US for health care are over $11000 per year and the average life expectancy is just under 79 years. The UK spends less than $5000 per person and the life expectancy is over 81 years. Have a look at
https://ourworldindata.org/us-life-expectancy-low
The US is an outlier in having extremely expensive private health care and a lot life expectancy.
And in the UK you can wait THREE YEARS for a knee replacement …
1) Health care has little impact on actual health measured by life expectancy, freedom from chronic disease, and infant mortality. Those are largely socioeconomic determinants.
2) There are two Americas. One in which people can expect to live into their 80s, like in the UK and Canada. And another where average life expectancy at birth is in the 60s, due to extreme premature birth, gun violence, drug overdoses, obesity and high blood pressure all taking their toll at higher rates and earlier ages than in the other America. Access to health care has almost nothing to do with this and certainly can not fix it.
For a country so lacking in the things you describe, how is it that so many people still want to come here, even illegally (which is one source of our problems, illegal immigration)? And the “extremist politics” you refer to comes from your side of the political spectrum, buddy. So don’t throw rocks when you live in the glassiest house I can think of.
Yes griff, and it’s the same lunatics that push the big climate lie that promote the most extreme Marxist political ideology ever to take hold in America, promote the open borders that are the root cause of widespread fentynal poisonings, put Progressive Marxist DA’s in place who are the root cause of rising crime and violence by not penalizing crime and are the same idiots who waste trillions on untenable green ‘infrastructure’ that gets in the way of legitimate infrastructure improvements. I don’t know what you mean about the lack of decent health care, it’s still top notch, but it has gotten more expensive and less available since Obamacare reared its ugly head.
Take out 5 of the big cities controlled by Democrats, and the U.S. drops to 189th of all countries for murder rate by guns.
As a Brit I can assure people that the NHS is in a terrible mess. That is not to criticise the clinicians who do a fantastic job but the idea that the NHS is “the envy of the world” is just outdated nonsense peddled by the left.
An odd related fact is that in Canada, unlike almost everywhere else and at all other times, the Baby Boomers aren’t becoming more conservative as they get older . I think they are scared to death that centre-right parties will somehow undo the fraying single-payer health system (no private payment allowed) that they rely on for their survival and they haven’t saved anywhere near enough money to pay for their care out of pocket..
Alberta is allowing some private clinics to operate but Albertans are probably the most conservative of the provinces. And I agree that Canadians are not becoming more conservative as they age, why else would the people keep supporting Trudeau?
They don’t care. It’s all about virtue signalling.
If our Save the Planet types really cared about CO2 then they should be demonstrating outside the Indian & Chinese embassies.
They cannot be so stupid as to think CO2 only comes from Western industries.
Michael VK5ELL
They cannot be so stupid as to think CO2 only comes from Western industries.
Michael VK5ELL
But their ‘education’ is that the West produced eeevil CO2, and is raysist, and sexist, and probably pogonophobic to boot.
so, logically,
“CO2 only comes from Western industries”.
So sad.
Auto
My experience of Greens shows that they do not care at all about people who live in developing countries. So this article showing the damage being done in developing countries for their beloved electric cars will have no effect on them at all. Every Green I know opposes industrial development in poor countries because it is “unsustainable”. They want developing countries to only use renewable energy because they know it doesn’t work. I find the hypocrisy and smugness of Greens utterly revolting.
It ISN’T the case that they ‘don’t care about developing countries’. They are not thinking in such a manner that ‘caring’ is an issue. We are almost talking about automata here – NO logical connection will be made between lithium and third world mining. They think (if you can call it that – it’s actually more like a conditioned response) that they are good, and that therefore ANY argument against what they are told is good must therefore be bad, and the correct thing to do is not to listen to it.
We are really not talking about logic or intelligence here, and so we can’t talk about ‘caring’…
“Automata”?
Robots
I understand and agree with Ronald Stein’s description of the reality of EV’s, they are disgusting virtue-signaling disasters. However, there is an important factor in the antiquated and disastrous mining practices he mentions, and that is corruption. Any country in the world can adapt modern mining laws and regulations, and every modern mining operation must work to achieve a good neighbor status. The problem is that corrupt officials would rather collect bribes to look the other way than to collect a normal salary to administer the correct operation of a mining venture. And again, you should not just stop the child labor issue, they use their small payments to buy food, so an overall, integrated, plan is needed.
“Any country in the world can adapt modern mining laws and regulations…”
Quite correct. The only problem is that the neighboring country won’t do so, will provide a cheaper product, and the mines of the honest country will shut down.
The only way to stop this is to make the products of the corrupt country just as expensive, or more so, than those of the honest country.
(This, by the way, hearkening back to a thread a couple of days ago, is how most of the commenters here differ from the various griffters that wander in. We support crippling tariffs on goods produced by slave labor, we oppose cheap labor being imported from Central and South America, we want citizens of OUR country being hired at good wages. In the full knowledge that such WILL increase what we have to pay for the things that we need. REAL virtue is never free.)
Child labor and slavery, who cares?
The Wal-Mart company has built a retail empire purely on the basis of “low prices”. Go to any store and find it crammed with cheap junk, much of it from China. The American consumers have demonstrated with money that they do not care about child labor or slavery.
Back in the day, Sears was the largest retailer in the US. They featured names like Craftsman and Black+Decker, back when they were proudly “Made in America”. Wal-Mart ate their lunch using cheap Chineseum junk. Even more suspicious are the Chinese products routed through Vietnam or The Philippines to make it look like they were manufactured somewhere else.
Decades ago, a European prof I had made a random comment.
“You Americans always buy “cheap”, you do not buy “good”.
And so it was.
It was american company owners and investors who shifted manufacturing to China
True, responding to the price pressure from consumers.
Re-read what I posted, understanding all of that started happening well before the jobs exodus of the 1990s.
My professors comment was from the 1970s! The destruction of American manufacturing has been a very long time in the works.
The world’s been selling out to the ChiComms since the ’40s, starting with fellow gangsters,
followed by the first Western group- libs/progressives/commies- & lastly, big business. Hard
line conservatives were the only ones who DIDN’T sell out cuz they knew the ChiComms
needed to be isolated & shunned as you NEVER do business with known thieves & mass
murderers. That WILL always end badly. And it did! Griffo- libs were the first Westerners to
help create the job & business shift to China- OWN IT!!!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dates_of_establishment_of_diplomatic_relations_with_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China
In response to the outrageous cost of your union labor.
And the cost of nonsensical regulations.
We all know the background to EVs regarding rare earths and other minerals. Slave labour for Nike shoes is completely unacceptable, for an EV a blind eye is readily turned.
However, imagine EVs and all that baggage were a brainchild of the so-called right, then the child labour, the slavery and environmental degredation would be the subject of a campaign at the very least.
The green new deal/net zero is erlösung durch zerstörung or salvation through destruction.
So the way to help developing nations develop is to refuse to trade with them?
I hate the idea of child-exploitation and environmental damage as much as any decent person. But these are no longer our colonies; we are not entitled to impose our religions, languages, culture, or any other damned thing on them.
If desperately poor people are being exploited by their own elites instead of ours that is very sad but we agreed to that long ago. In fact we pat ourselves on the back and consider ourselves virtuous for handing back what was never ours. And you know, we probably are, even if the local leaders are now behaving as badly or worse than we did.
Don’t be trying to re-colonise.
None of this is to say we shouldn’t prefer to deal with partners in those countries whom we consider more ethical (by our standards). And if those partners want to charge a bit more so they profit just as richly, we can decide how much our virtue is worth to us.
‘If desperately poor people are being exploited by their own elites instead of ours that is very sad but we agreed to that long ago.’
Colonialism is immoral no matter how bad the local elites are vs. ours. I think the issue here is what constitutes ‘free trade’, particularly what drives it. Within the Ricardo-like framework of free markets, the developing nation might have an advantage in labor costs and the developed nation might have an advantage in capital, so production and welfare would be optimized via trade between the two. Within this framework, there is no ‘exploitation’ since there isn’t any coercion. The problem today in real life is that there is too much coercion, whether it’s in the developed countries, whose elites have arbitrarily imposed non-economic regulations that cause capital to expatriate, or in the developing countries, whose elites encourage the capital influx by exploiting their own people.
I have tried to tell a lot of “Greens” all this correct scientific information, and they believe because they pay for “green” electricity it all comes from renewables. Then there is their EVs, they think they are made of “green” materials that have no carbon (the totally maligned necessity for life) footprint, because the manufacturers claim “zero emissions”. The bit the leave out is that whilst emissions may be low (still particulates from tires) and lubricants which need to be replaced periodically (from oil!), the manufacture of the car is much worse than an internal combustion vehicle. Overall the IC car is probably less polluting over its lifetime, all things considered. BTW Lithium mines actually are very inefficient because Lithium in bulk form (Lithium carbonate often, which emits a lot of CO2 when refined, woops!) is usually a small proportion of the “ore”.
Same with Silica+Graphite gives Silicon for solar!
Also, as black outs/power outages become more common due to reliance on intermittent energy (solar, wind), who in their right mind would choose to depend on an EV?
The supreme irony of the whole Greenie movement including EV’s is that while they like to pretend they are “saving the planet” and thus their actions and motivations are unassailably saintly, they are in fact just the opposite. The primary motivations appear to be that of assuaging”Green Guilt”, feeling good about themselves, and virtue signaling. It is as pathetic as it is disgusting.
A slight variation on the theme – I’m gonna use the phrase ‘Bite Back‘
(forgive me)
BBC Headline:”Tesco plant-based food advert banned
In a haha nutshell, some number of people complained about Tesco’s claims of ‘Saving The Planet‘ and A Judge has agreed with them = Tesco was, basically, Lying by Omission.
Just as happens all throughout CliSci. small world innit.
It jibes with my personal experience of living a ‘balanced diet’ and always making a point of visiting the Reduced Shelf in any Tesco I visit – looking for ‘unwanted’ cow, pig or lamb.
(It breaks my heart to think someone put their heart into growing those things and they are inches away from landfill. I used to grow cow, I ‘understand’ – I feel for the folks that do.)
But recently and its really noticeable, Tesco are offloading vast amounts of Plant Patty Burgers and other vegarian mush through the reduced corner.
iow: Nobody is buying the stuff
Hence this story, Tesco in their misleading advert were trying to promote that shyte after they’d done a store-wide price reduction
(The double whammy is insane – (real) food prices skyrocket while nobody wants veggie mush even at reduced prices)
There is hope. Wonder if it will apply to electric cars?
and here‘s the link but you hardly need it now
If you have time and inclination, find out who Stefanie Seneff is and what she has to say, about vegetable food.
(and autism, that it is actually curable esp if the DIY home based protocol is started at less than age mid-20’s)
Another babe I’ve only just discovered is one Bianca Garcia.
Is that one practical realist ‘head-screwed on properly’ sort of a gal. from Texas
edit to PS
What our ‘ambassador’ is doing (above) is describing the behaviour of swarming (don’t take it personally) locusts destroying everything in the search for, in the broadest broadest sense possible, Nutrition
We Are All Very Hungry
(yet still won’t touch veggie burgers. that’s just beautiful)
And the price or ‘Reduced Price’ cow pig and lamb in Tesco is 50% more than it was Full Price 12 months ago
Peta – I wonder whether I am the only person who sometimes finds the patience to read your somewhat rambling words, searching for meaning. My conclusion is that you could be an interesting person but your thoughts are not “thought through” enough. Pause a little longer before committing your thoughts to paper? But I agree with your reaction to all that veggie madness!
This was far more coherent than usual, Mike.
Is it ethical to order out when the Chinese do all the global deals for resources, processing, manufacturing, and shipping? These will soon be backed up by a larger navy than the U.S. and plans include more aircraft carriers than the U.S. and more ICBMs to go along with the Russian missile and warhead advantage.
Oh dear! Perhaps the author would care to research conditions for oil workers and those living near wells in Nigeria, or conditions for coal miners in the developing world?
and I repeat my call for Watts readers to boycott ALL products containing material mined by slave workers (or products assembled by slave workers). Which include many consumer and electronic goods…
griff you are an idiot.
The IEA demonstrated long ago that a typical EV requires six times as many minerals to build as an ICEV. Currently there are around 16.5m EVs worldwide compared to over 1.4billion ICEVs.
That means a massive explosion in mining is needed if you want to replace all those ICEVs. Of course thinking you will replace all those ICEVs with EVs is pie in the sky stuff but even so a huge increase in mining will result from the attempt and it will have far reaching detrimental effects in many places.
The IEA has recently published its Global EV Outlook 2022 entitled ‘Securing supplies for an electric future’
It has three scenarios: the Stated Policies Scenario, The Announced Pledges Scenario, and the Net Zero 2050 Scenario.
The first two scenarios are based on countries announcements and the third is IEA’s assessment of need to meet Net Zero.
The number of EVs worldwide is expected to rise to 200m by 2030 under the SP Scenario, 250m under the AP Scenario, compared to over 350m under the NZ Scenario.
To meet the demand for lithium under the first two scenarios will require 30 and 50 new lithium mines, for nickel 41 and 60 new mines and for cobalt 11 and 17 new mines.
That’s 82 new mines under the SP Scenario and 127 new mines under the AP Scenario.
And it still won’t be enough to reach Net Zero!
Please don’t refer to that Net Zero madness as a “NZ Scenario”. We residents of New Zealand take exception, even though we are mandated to follow that totally impossible path!
My apologies. It is in fact the IEA’s assessment of what would be required to meet Net Zero by 2050 and so is not really a ‘scenario’ I was just using consistent wording.
And my last sentence about Net Zero was sarcasm.
Wrong, hey want most of us peons to have no personal transportation (and probably little public or commercial transportation). Stay where you are and be happy about it.
It doesn’t matter how many times Griff spouts idiotic ascii on here, and/or is told how stupid he is.
He actually enjoys being told he is a lying toad.
This fact never seems to occur to anyone on WUWT.
“stupid does as stupid is”, but nobody can ever be as dumb as a stupid masochist.
That is how Griff is.
At least give him some credit for being consistent.
Whoosh! That’s the sound of the point sailing past griff’s Warmist Koolade-addled and shriveled from disuse brain.
Oh dear!
Griff embarrasses himself again.
I buy ethically, I don’t shout about it
Are you sure your computer wasn’t assembled by Uyghurs? Better stop using it griff.
Nobody in their right mind would be buying Li-Ion batteries.
Neither would they support “lousy” intermittent electricity that actually costs more than ordinary electricity gernerated by nuclear power or fossil fuels.
We put in a totally American solar installation. The excess we can’t use automatically goes, safely, back into the power supply. So far we’ve completely paid off the installation and continue to get ~$100/month, average year round. The whole “Green Energy” bloviating is a scam to produce more profits to distribute to billionaires, not to “conserve” anything.
If you have an EV you are privileged and stupid if you believe it is environmentally advantageous.
I think the ethical problem is actually much worse. With cars (and other vehicles), there are two components to the energy: A) Storing energy in the car and B) the source of the energy being stored. The article for the most part compares the A) of electric cars with the A+B) for gasoline powered cars. If we separate A and B:
A: Storage:
Electrics: Lithium batteries with all the environmental/human issues noted.
Gasoline: A metal gas tank – something that uses few raw materials.
B: Energy source
Electrics: The mix of coal, gas, nuclear, hydro, etc. noted – including extensive use of refined oil in mines.
Gasoline: Refined oil
So we see that electrics/gasoline don’t differ much in B but that electrics are far worse
environmentally on the A.
Scotty Kilmer in the video has a Masters in Anthropology and was trained as a mechanic by his grandfather. Not my idea of an expert.
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach had a law degree and was trained as a musician by his father.
He was not, therefore, your “idea of an expert” in music.
🤨
Check out the quick 7-minute video interview between Ronald Stein and Rick Amato on “Your America TV”
“sign in ”
A transcript , please ?
Or an open source ?
For
use everything in your life either directly or indirectly
Ready, Fire , Aim. Environmentalists are going backward. We cannot eliminate fossil fuels until we have a sustainable way to replace them. Todays technology is not it. All green projects today are unsustainable. Without the existing power grid green energy is useless tomus.
Ask the Chinese….
https://www.lifenews.com/2022/04/15/chinese-doctors-are-executing-prisoners-by-harvesting-their-organs/
“With most of the exotic minerals and metals to build EV batteries being mined in developing countries, is it ethical to support the environmental degradation and humanity atrocities occurring in developing countries?”
Ronald, I am a sceptic about Crisis climate, but I’m also a longtime consultant and explorationist in the mining industry. While you are happy to extol the virtues and indispensability of fossil fuels (I’m with you on that), you have bought into the propaganda by the same people (‘green’ NGOs, Minewatch, and other anti-development neomarxists).
Take a look at the photo of these smiling, well fed, well dressed people! It’s the same photo that every anti-mining, anti-civilization, anti-free enterprise woke professor and activist wastrel uses. Wherever a region is endowed with valuable minerals, artisanal miners take advantage of it and they are always notably better off than their compatriots in other parts if the country. Mining has dangers but so have agriculture, manufacturing, and worst of all extreme poverty!
There was a a terrible time in the eastern Congo with the Rwanda Massacre when Hutus from Rwanda took over mines traditionally worked by Tutsi people from Rwanda and enslaved the miners. Otherwise, most Artisanal mining in Africa, Asia and South America are family enterprises. They hold mining leases, governments have mining inspectorates, some more diligent than others to be sure. Latin America has artisanal mining associations… What you don’t know is the big modern regulated mining industry players produce most of these rare metal.
Ronald, this is a lazy piece of work. Please don’t just Google the usual suspects for info on mining. Educate yourself first. For example, Li is only mined or produced from brines by well-financed modern, regulated companies.
Considering that only 1 of the top six lithium producing nations is a third world nation (Zimbabwe) and that it only produces 1.1% of that produced by the top six nations (1,600 tones per year), a list dominated by Australia (42,000 tonnes per year), Chile (18,000 tonnes), China (7,500 tonnes), Argentina (6,400 tonnes), and Portugal (1,200 tonnes), the author’s attempt to turn EV use into some sort of moral choice fall completely flat on its face.
99% of the production of the top 6 producers comes from first world highly developed nations all over the planet.
Another idiotic, lying and manipulative post from you.
We all know Lithium is pointless as a material in EVs unless there are other elements used in electrodes.
“The mining industry in the Democratic Republic of Congo is the most lucrative and essential part of the DRC economy.
It is their largest source of export income. The DRC accounted for more than two thirds of global cobalt production in 2021, making it the world’s largest cobalt producer by a large margin.” 70% of world cobalt comes from DRC.
Based on operational mines and projected demand, forecasters predict that supply won’t be able to keep up with demand by 2030, or even as early as 2025
alternative is Russia (of course)
Russia corrupts them all……
Russia is a distant runner-up to the DRC’s production stranglehold, producing 6,100 tonnes of cobalt in 2019 – around 4% of the global share.
Mining activity in the country, which has an estimated 250,000 tonnes of cobalt reserves, is mainly concentrated in the Altai Republic area.
The Karakul deposit is one of the largest cobalt deposits in Russia.
As part of state plans, (by 2022), production in Russia should increase up to 8,000-10,000 tonnes, compared to 5,000-6,000 tonnes at present…(good luck!)
BUT:-
Russia, home to nickel giant PJSC MMC Norilsk Nickel, produced 195,000 tonnes of mined nickel in 2021, or 7.2% of global supply
Russia has one active cobalt and nickel producer, miner Norilsk Nickel.
Norilsk Nickel is the world’s largest producer of refined nickel and the 11th largest copper producer.
Potanin was one of the initiators of the controversial loans-for-shares program in 1995, and thanks to them he acquired his largest assets in metallurgy..U.S and EU authorities have not commented on why Potanin has avoided sanctioning..-has not criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin for the war in Ukraine
The richest oligarch of them all, Vladimir Potanin, remains untouched by Western sanctions……..
Nornickel’s battery materials production facility in Finland, built in partnership with German chemicals giant BASF, is a key pillar of the EU’s green agenda. Nornickel is also an integral player in global palladium markets: it produces around 35% of the world’s palladium, a rare metal used in semiconductors and cars.
Potanin counts an important friend: Andrey Klishas, former chairman and president of Nornickel, who chairs he Russian Federation Council’s Committee on Constitutional Legislation and State Building.
Klishas was a key figure in Russia’s 2020 constitutional reforms, which enabled President Putin to stay in power
“There hasn’t been a direct ban on trading Russian material, but the risk is now just too high. You expose your business to all sorts of issues. That makes it basically impossible to do new direct business”
Duane yet another Putinista.
A gross apologist for slavery, more authoritarian crap, pollution and edemic corruption.
Ronald’s article is a lazy piece sourced from anti development NGOs. For your info, most of the cobalt in the Congo is mined and refined by large modern global miners. The small independent family artisanal operators mine the little stuff. These people are better off than their compatriots away from resource areas. Look at the picture of smiling, well fed and dressed miners. Ditto in dev countries in Asia, Lat America, etc. Duane is generally correct on this.
That’s so cute, that you peons think you’re going to get to drive one of “billions” of electric vehicles. Existing lithium mining is more than sufficient to supply our “betters” with their vehicles while the rest of us trudge along to find a place with water for subsistence agriculture.
Blood Diamonds are BAD and even destroyed when found. Blood Lithium is GOOD.
99% Lithium comes from outside of Africa.
Whatever happened to the outrage and boycotts of stores that sold clothing made in sweat shops from a few years ago?
How many of those that supported the boycotts now drive EVs?
PS Has lithium been tested on animals? What’s it’s LD50? (I didn’t want to leave out the Animal Rights crowd or the PeTA people. 😎
Getting lithium from seawater: We Can Now Harvest Usable Lithium From Seawater | IE (interestingengineering.com)
Every time I see someone proclaim EV’s are the answer, I just call them neo-colonialists. Any green environmentalist that doesn’t promote and allow the mining and processing of the metals needed in their own country are simply making indentured servants of the people in poor countries where this is done.
Colonialism doesn’t only mean becoming the government of a country. It also means exploiting the people and the resources of locality for your own country’s benefit.