[HN Gopher] The Dark Side of Congo's Cobalt Rush
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The Dark Side of Congo's Cobalt Rush
Author : GranularRecipe
Score : 53 points
Date : 2021-05-25 16:03 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newyorker.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newyorker.com)
| Tabular-Iceberg wrote:
| Weren't we supposed to stop using darkness to mean something bad?
| Like not having blacklists anymore.
| [deleted]
| jimbob45 wrote:
| I don't buy into NAACP propaganda so no for me.
| Tabular-Iceberg wrote:
| Did the NAACP have anything to do with this at all? I rather
| get the impression that it's something WASPs in left-liberal
| tech companies and news outlets came up with. Which is why
| I'm surprised seeing this language in The New Yorker.
| Alupis wrote:
| "Dark Side" is used here to describe something that cannot
| be easily seen or is not well known... as in "I cannot see
| because it's dark". What else would you call it... "un-
| light"?
|
| It literally has nothing to do with race or skin color.
| [deleted]
| tha0xb3 wrote:
| It's tying darkness to something negative, making "dark"
| or "black" negative in general. This means "dark skinned
| people" are also similarly looked at negatively.
|
| Please use inclusive language. It costs you nothing and
| makes the world safer for BIPOCs.
| [deleted]
| Tabular-Iceberg wrote:
| Curiously "whitewashing" is still used liberally, and
| specifically to mean "bad stuff that white people do".
|
| Of course it doesn't have anything to do with skin colour
| either, but rather the metaphorical act of painting over
| flaws with cheap calcium hydroxide paint in order to hide
| them rather than actually fix them.
| Alupis wrote:
| OK, that's fine, but let's not try to inject skin color
| issues into everything please. It serves no good purpose
| but to reduce people, and arguments, down to the color of
| some individual's skin - a trait that has nothing to do
| with the argument being put forth.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| mycologos wrote:
| If you're interested in learning a little more about the Congo's
| history, I highly recommend Michela Wrong's book _In the
| Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz: Living on the Brink of Disaster in Mobutu
| 's Congo_. Ignore the sensationalized title and apparently cliche
| reference to _Heart of Darkness_ , the writing is much smarter
| than that. She wrote it shortly after Mobutu's death in 1997,
| after living in the country for several years. You might also
| know her from a more recent book about Paul Kagame [1].
|
| Perhaps surprisingly, the least sympathetic characters post-
| independence in _In the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz_ might be the World
| Bank and IMF employees.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_Not_Disturb_(book)
| sib wrote:
| And further along this path, if you really want to be saddened
| / depressed / disgusted, there's King Leopold's Ghost.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004KZOWEG
| webmaven wrote:
| Guns, Money, and Cellphones (June 11, 2001):
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20010813152613/http://www.thesta...
|
| The article is split into 5 pages, but is worth reading, if only
| to see how little anything has changed in the 20 years this has
| been a well-known issue.
| vincent-toups wrote:
| The phrase "Congo's Cobalt Rush" seems to presage mostly dark
| side to me.
| agumonkey wrote:
| well you never know how many shades of dark there can be..
| mcbishop wrote:
| >To be scared, you must first have means. - Odilon Kajumba
| Kilanga (a poor Congolese miner)
|
| That's so sad.
| 5tefan wrote:
| This isn't a dark side. It's the other side of the same coin and
| we try to tuck it away, keep it under the rug, hide it from
| light.
| chasd00 wrote:
| > side of the same coin and we try to tuck it away, keep it
| under the rug, hide it from light
|
| if only there were a phrase synonymous with side of a coin
| hidden from light
| elihu wrote:
| I think it's worth pointing out that at least for EV batteries,
| this is a trade-off. Lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries don't
| contain cobalt or nickel. We could be building cars with LFP
| cells, they just would be heavier and/or have shorter range.
|
| LFP is getting better. I think recent cells tend to be in the 150
| Wh/kg ballpark, which isn't bad. In the short term I expect we'll
| probably see LFP in trucks and busses and low and medium-end EVs.
| Or maybe some new battery technology will come along and the
| whole trade-off will be moot.
|
| (I think Tesla is already using or planning to use LFP cells from
| CATL in some of their model 3s. I'm not sure if that's just for
| the China market or if they're going to use LFP for US models.)
| baybal2 wrote:
| 175Wh/kg cells were on the market for a few years, and I myself
| held those in my hands.
|
| There were many claims of LFP at above 200Wh/kg (which is
| already better than commodity NCM,) but I never seen those with
| my own eyes.
| Tade0 wrote:
| > I think recent cells tend to be in the 150 Wh/kg ballpark,
| which isn't bad.
|
| Even better:
|
| https://insideevs.com/news/481770/guoxuan-210-whkg-lfp-batte...
|
| Those sub $100/kWh cells that made the news a while ago are
| were all LFP.
| Baeocystin wrote:
| FWIW, I use LFP batteries for my motorcycles and hobbyist
| needs. Their durability is spectacular, and it is very
| convenient that they can match the charging voltages for 12V
| automotive lead-acid systems without any kind of expensive
| interface.
|
| Of course, this is completely different than using them for
| large-scale battery packs. Just pointing out that they are
| already in use in specialty niches today.
| elihu wrote:
| I'm using LFP cells in an EV conversion I'm working on.
|
| I could have gotten better range by using used Tesla modules,
| but then I would have had to deal with liquid cooling, and
| the modules were an awkward size that didn't really fit
| conveniently where I wanted to put them. Plus LFP cells are a
| lot harder to accidentally catch on fire.
| baybal2 wrote:
| Funny factoid, if you have an EV, you might be unknowingly using
| Cuban cobalt, especially if the EV came with claims of "conflict
| minerals free."
|
| US is somehow closing eyes on that, despite Cuba being sanctioned
| to the brim by them themselves.
| wtn wrote:
| Sherritt International's operations in Cuba are well-known, and
| their cobalt products are not sold in the United States.
| baybal2 wrote:
| No, it is sold to China, and then the trace naturally
| vanishes.
|
| Then a Chinese broker comes to an EV battery materials co.,
| and says we have a conflict cobalt for you from Congo, and a
| conflict free one from "somewhere else."
| javert wrote:
| Sad. Cuban cobalt is definitely not conflict free.
| xibalba wrote:
| Will you please elaborate? This is interesting and I, and I
| assume many others, am pretty ignorant with respect to the
| goings on in Cuba.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I would assume any hard labor mining with chemical
| exposure/pollution intensive task is not conflict free.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| The Cuban regime is known for it's purges against
| dissidents, homosexuals as well as total censorship and
| confiscation of goods from it's citizens.
| slownews45 wrote:
| What's the conflict in Cuba that is leading to conflict
| mining there. I'm familiar with the wars / slavery elsewhere
| but wasn't plugged in on cuba wars.
| vkou wrote:
| Conflict free refers to active civil wars / use of non-
| punitive slave labour.
|
| If you stretch the definition to include Cuba, I will happily
| stretch it to note that no minerals mined in the US are
| 'conflict-free', since every mine/pipeline/oil well of note
| has been built on the bones of a conflict between resource
| extractors, and communities/groups that they are negatively
| impacting.
|
| Stretch it enough, and the term loses all meaning.
| [deleted]
| Popegaf wrote:
| The dark side of modern prosperity is that it exists through
| exploitation of the poor. The EU is planning to make their own
| chip fabs to reduce dependency on Asia, but all that means is
| they will have to increase exploitation of South America and
| Africa.
|
| We will happily exploit them and corrupt their governments, but
| reject "economical refugees" despite us being a major reason of
| their problems.
| Gatsky wrote:
| I think a good definition of Capitalism is displacing the cost of
| negative externalities in time and space as far away as possible
| from your profit centre.
| ctdonath wrote:
| Timely to note that Tesla is eliminating cobalt from battery
| production.
| mycologos wrote:
| Have they made recent claims, or are you referring to the less
| ambitious plans described in the article?
|
| > Last year, Tesla pledged to use lithium-iron-phosphate
| batteries, which do not contain cobalt, in some of its electric
| cars. Huayou stock plummeted. Still, Reuters noted, "it was not
| clear to what extent Tesla intends to use L.F.P. batteries,"
| and the company "has no plans to stop" using batteries that
| contain cobalt.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| It baffles me that "poor people being mistreated by large
| corporations" is such a non-story for American media, while "poor
| people being mistreated by large corporations that make EVs or
| iPhones" is such a recurring theme, to the extent that it seems
| it's the iPhones or the EVs that are the issue, rather than the
| mistreatment.
|
| The optimistic take is that the author is trying to motivate the
| people who already care about "saving the planet" to also care
| about exploited workers, though I would have hoped for more
| constructive suggestions on how to help if that was the case.
|
| The pessimistic take is that this is just a long form essay
| version of a YouTube thumbnail with a shocked face on it,
| randomly pressing emotional buttons to attract attention and
| using any random psychological lever that seems to work.
|
| If this article interested you, I'd recommend the 2011
| documentary, Empire of Dust about Chinese engineers working to
| build roads in the Congo for their mines in this area.
| Fascinating look at the human side of this from both the Chinese
| and Congolese perspective:
|
| https://m.imdb.com/title/tt2148945/
|
| > Lao Yang and Eddy both work for a company called CREC (Chinese
| Railway Engineering Company). They have just set up camp near the
| remote mining town of Kolwezi in the Katanga province of the RDC.
| The goal of the company i..
| mycologos wrote:
| I suppose the thing with EVs and iPhones is that the contrast
| is _right there_ , you can draw a pretty solid line between
| extremely poor and unfortunate people extracting raw materials
| and extremely wealthy using the finished product. It's also a
| link that, I think, a lot of people still aren't quite aware
| of. There's not a _Blood Diamond_ for cobalt, as far as I know.
| divbzero wrote:
| Yes, and many of the target readers are emotionally connected
| in that they are customers who use the finished product.
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(page generated 2021-05-25 23:01 UTC)