A Harvard visiting professor and trendy slavery activist uncovered the “appalling” cobalt mining trade in the Congo on a latest episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience” that went viral. The video has already racked up over a million views and counting.
Siddharth Kara, writer of “Cobalt Red: How The Blood of The Congo Powers Our Lives,” advised podcast host Joe Rogan that there’s no such factor as “clean cobalt.’”
“That’s all marketing,” Kara mentioned.
Kara advised Rogan that the extent of “suffering” of the Congolese folks working in cobalt mines was astounding.
Podcast large Joe Rogan reacted to a guest’s tales of the cobalt mining trade in a latest episode.
(The Joe Rogan Experience/Spotify)
When requested by Rogan if there was any cobalt mine in the Congo that didn’t depend on “child labor” or “slavery,” the Harvard visiting professor advised him there have been none.
“I’ve never seen one and I’ve been to almost all the major industrial cobalt mines” in the nation, Kara mentioned.
One motive for that’s that the demand for cobalt is exceptionally excessive: “Cobalt is in every single lithium, rechargeable battery manufactured in the world today,” he defined.
As a outcome, it’s troublesome to assume of a bit of expertise that doesn’t depend on cobalt to perform, Kara mentioned. “Every smartphone, every tablet, every laptop and crucially, every electric vehicle” wants the mineral.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo is one of the poorest nations in the world. (AP Photo/Clarice Butsapu)
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“We can’t function on a day-to-day basis without cobalt, and three-fourths of the supply is coming out of the Congo,” he added. “And it’s being mined in appalling, heart-wrenching, dangerous conditions.”
But “by and large the world doesn’t know what’s happening” in the Congo, Kara mentioned.
“I don’t think people are aware of how horrible it is,” Rogan agreed.
The Biden administration not too long ago entered into an settlement with the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Zambia to bolster the inexperienced vitality provide chain, regardless of the DRC’s documented points with youngster labor.
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Cobalt initially “took off because it was used in lithium-ion batteries to maximize their charge and stability,” Kara defined. “And it just so happened that the Congo is sitting on more cobalt than the rest of the planet combined,” he added.
Men work in a gold mine in Chudja, northeastern Congo, one of the areas in which so-called “conflict minerals” are mined.
(AFP Photo / Lionel Healing)
As a outcome, the Congo, a rustic of roughly 90 million folks, turned the middle of a geopolitical battle over helpful minerals. “Before anyone knew what was happening, [the] Chinese government [and] Chinese mining companies took control of almost all the big mines and the local population has been displaced,” Kara mentioned. Subsequently, the Congolese are “under duress.”
He continued: “They dig in absolutely subhuman, gut-wrenching conditions for a dollar a day, feeding cobalt up the supply chain into all the phones, all the tablets, and especially electric cars.”
British rapper Zuby really helpful that his practically a million followers watch the interview.
“This latest Joe Rogan Experience podcast is heavy,” he wrote. “If you have a smartphone or electric vehicle (that’s 100% of you) then I strongly recommend listening to it.”
Some, if not all, of the well-known tech and vitality corporations in the world are implicated in the humanitarian disaster, Kara mentioned.
“This is the underside of the provision chain of your iPhone, of your Tesla, of your Samsung,” he asserted.
Fox News’ Thomas Catenacci contributed to this report.
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