Far be it for me to defend oil companies, but this is an apples to oranges comparison.
Royal Dutch Shell was held liable in a Netherlands court for the oil spills in the the Niger Delta. I’m not familiar with the details but I’m sure they’re available online.
I’m not aware of any litigation being brought against the companies responsible for what’s going on in the Congo. But then again most of those companies are Chinese so I doubt anything would come of it.
There’s also the fact that what happened in the Niger Valley doesn’t represent 80+ % of the worlds oil supply, as is the case with the cobalt reserves in the Congo.
But all of that distracts from the intent of the topic, that being how people can use the higher morality of their cause to justify behavior they would otherwise condemn from others.
Reminds of the blood diamonds from Sierra Leone. DeBeers was called to task for their involvement in that, but I don’t know if anything came from that beyond a massive PR campaign.
Just demonstrates that we all have blood on our hands.
I don’t recall getting any kickbacks or favours from any oppressors, my Dad started with less than zero, just a bank loan based on a good family reputation. We never had shares in any of that stuff, our money came from our farm produce, nowhere else, I’ve had various other jobs but I’ve never owned stocks.
That’ll learn 'em. Now everyone can get back to fishing and farming… Oh, wait, they can’t.
Anyway, I’m not defending what’s going on with the cobalt mining.
The story is always the same in Africa. Desperately poor people living around valuable resources, with corrupt or completely absent government regulation.
Gotta hand it to the Chinese. As terrible as many of the western run operations are, the Chinese manage to outdo them, and there won’t be documentaries exposing the conduct of and damage caused by these operations on Chinese TV creating political pressure to do something about it.
It’s about 24% of battery production.
It has a lower energy density per kilo than cells using cobalt at present, but can sustain around 70% more recharge cycles. Tesla uses them in their standard range cars sold in China. The weight issue does pose problems for use in vehicles.
If you could manufacture a LFP battery with the same energy density as the cells using cobalt, everyone would switch tomorrow, because cobalt is expensive. A stack of money is being invested in battery technologies.
Moreover, the owners of the mines it doesn’t control mostly sell to Chinese traders and Chinese cobalt refineries in any case, and that includes Glencore, owner of the Katanga mine, DRC’s single largest mine.
I think I read Glencore, the Swiss companies subsidiary Kantaga Mining, is the biggest cobalt mine in Kantaga DRC,
and has been accused of the abuses above
The exploitation of the masses is nothing new. I’m sure if anyone cared to look, what China is doing in the Congo can be found to varying degrees with other things they are doing with their Belt and Road Initiative. But of course all of that will get overlooked as well. Just more evidence of how China really has the West by the balls.
One solution would be to utilize all these social media tools to raise awareness and get people to stop buying new devices. But, of course, that will never happen either.
Yes, that’s it. Glencore Xstrata has head offices for different divisions in Switzerland, London and Rotterdam. Not a stranger to corruption to get what they want either:
…the CIA found that Glencore had paid $3,222,780 in illegal kickbacks to obtain oil in the course of the UN oil-for-food programme for Iraq.
It’s cheap people pinning all of this on China when nearly half of cobalt is produced by mines owned by other nationalities. It seems like a handy scapegoat that absolves everybody else of their sins.
I wish countries like the DRC would insist on part national ownership, refining and production of a certain percentage of products in exchange for mining rights.
Good on Zimbabwe and I hope the DRC do the same, as well as kicking out Western and Chinese entities who do not support their moves for more control. For every factory manufacturing batteries, there are other factories producing equipment for them and lots of other businesses providing services for those businesses and their employees.
The West paints an opposite picture of bollocks to citizens where mining and manufacturing are inconvenient stages in the process of making real money in financial services, branding and sales. Reality is that it doesn’t matter to the people if there’s low profit in manufacturing if 1,000,000 sustainable jobs are created.
