Cobalt in the Congo

[DD'eDeN aka note/nickname/alas_my_loves]

power struggle over cobalt is rattling the green energy revolution.

Cobalt is vital for electric vehicles and the push against climate change. Two-thirds of it comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the quest for the metal has demonstrated how the clean energy revolution is caught in a cycle of exploitation, an investigation by The Times found.

In particular, China and the U.S. are rivals in Congo ...
-

They won't stop destroying the Congo until all the pygmies are gone and fauna are dead and the forest converted to oil palm plantations. Goodbye Eden, hello king Leopold prison.

[DD'eDeN aka note/nickname/alas_my_loves]

No surprise, President Biden's son is making green money from this rape of the Congo:

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/hunter-biden-firm-chinese-purchase-cobalt-mine.amp

[Mario Petrinovic]

You are living in the West, America, you don't understand a sh.t. I am
living in some "third world" country, Croatia (ever heard of Balkan
wars?). Never blame others (especially the West) for what is happening
in your own country. It is your own country, for god's sake.
Once French president brought some financial help to some African
country (just like he is doing every year). And the president of this
African country (I believe this country is bigger than France) said, we
have so many resources, we should bring help to France, and not to
receive help from France.
Croats are as poor as they can be. If they are any poorer they
wouldn't be able to survive. Just like Polish people, Hungarians or
Romanians. It is their government that takes care that they are as poor
as they can be. Because that way they can control them.
And Croats want things to be just like that. Every Croat wants to be a
member of the elite which controls other Croats, so they understand that
this is how things have to be, and no other way. You offer Croats
freedom, they will not take it, because they don't understand how free
system works, they want things to be exactly like they are now. They are
afraid of free systems, they cannot control it.
And yes, those Congo leaders know how to control people, only, they
don't know how to make economy to work. Yes, they are exploiting their
own people, they are exploiting their own country, it is them (the Congo
elite) that are exploiters, not the Biden's son, who lives in
non-exploiting, free, country, and who doesn't understand at all this
Congoian, or Croatian, sh.t. He just takes the opportunities, if
opportunities are there, and absolutely nothing else. But, it is not him
who created those opportunities, it is the Congo elite that made it.
Supported by Congo people.

--
https://groups.google.com/g/human-evolution
human-e...@googlegroups.com

[I Envy JTEM]

DD'eDeN aka note/nickname/alas_my_loves wrote:

> Cobalt is vital for electric vehicles and the push against climate change.

Yeah, if we could only dig out enough cobalt the glacial/interglacial cycle will end because, it
only started from the lack of digging it up...




-- --

https://jtem.tumblr.com/post/668269425555898368

[DD'eDeN aka note/nickname/alas_my_loves]

-
If god was smart he'd be mario.

[I Envy JTEM]

DD'eDeN aka note/nickname/alas_my_loves wrote:

> If god was smart he'd be mario.

And if Dog was smart he'd spell his name backwards and collect all those donations.



-- --

https://jtem.tumblr.com/post/668581717740847104

[Mario Petrinovic]

On 22.11.2021. 20:28, I Envy JTEM wrote:
> DD'eDeN aka note/nickname/alas_my_loves wrote:
>> If god was smart he'd be mario.
>
> And if Dog was smart he'd spell his name backwards and collect all those donations.

And if I am not a dog, I'd be god, :) .

--
https://groups.google.com/g/human-evolution
human-e...@googlegroups.com

[DD'eDeN aka note/nickname/alas_my_loves]

Update

It might be difficult for engineers who are developing the technologies to understand the social effects. By working together, we can form a whole picture of the consequences of resource extraction."

Unintended consequences of decarbonization

What Dunn and Young discovered was deeply troubling. They found cobalt mining was associated with increases in violence, substance abuse, food and water insecurity, and physical and mental health challenges. Community members reported losing communal land, farmland and homes, which miners literally dug up in order to extract cobalt. Without farmland, Congolese people were sometimes forced to cross international borders into Zambia just to purchase food.

Understanding cobalt's human cost
Miners at a cobalt cleaning site in DRC wash ore in water, rendering it unsafe to drink. Credit: Northwestern University

"You might think of mining as just digging something up," Young said. "But they are not digging on vacant land. Homelands are dug up. People are literally digging holes in their living room floors. The repercussions of mining can touch almost every aspect of life."

Waste generated from mining cobalt and other metals can pollute water, air and soil, leading to decreased crop yields, contaminated food and water, and respiratory and reproductive health issues. Miners reported that working conditions were unsafe, unfair and stressful. Several workers noted that they feared mineshaft collapses.

As industry leaders move toward decarbonization to slow, stop or even reverse human-caused climate change, technologies are increasingly relying on batteries instead of fossil fuels. Unfortunately, the effects of these technologies on social well-being are understudied and data related to these effects are insufficient for use in policy-making decisions.

"If we're trying to be do-gooders by caring for the environment, then the environment shouldn't be limited to only the natural environment—but also the human environment," said Young, who studies water insecurityacross a range of global contexts.

Offering new solutions

Throughout their work, Dunn, Young and their team found little in the way of established guidance on best practices for conducting S-LCA, including little guidance on how to conduct interviews and a lack of consensus on how to use and analyze data from stakeholders.

"Most of this work has been conceptualized by natural scientists who have limited knowledge about social impacts," Dunn said. "Measuring environmental effects of a technology is sometimes as simple as adding a sensor to measure emissions. But trying to measure intangible social effects like mental health is much harder."

"And things that aren't measured remain invisible," Young added.

Because the quality of the social impact assessment relies on the quality of the data, the researchers identified five categories of data sources, which can be leveraged to better understand localized effects of mining: (1) interviews and focus groups of affected community members; (2) local public records, including land-related court claims, documentation of forced migration and publicly available health records; (3) cross-culturally validated scales, including data collected by national statistics agencies and organizations such as UNICEF and the World Bank; (4) data collected for the Sustainable Development Goals; and (5) remote sensing and imagery, including satellite imagery showing how farmland has changed after cobalt mining is established.

The researchers believe such methods can be applied to other scenarios beyond cobalt mining to gather social data surrounding emerging technologies.

"We have a long way to go before we can put S-LCA results in front of decision-makers in the same way we can with E-LCA results," Dunn said. "In the meantime, our society is going through huge changes, including climate change, so we feel a sense of urgency. We hope that policy makers recognize the urgency of the human costs of cobalt mining sooner rather than later."

The study, "Addressing the social life cycle inventory analysis data gap: Insights from a case study of cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo," was supported by Leslie and Mac McQuown, the Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems and the Carnegie Corporation.



More information: Addressing the social life cycle inventory analysis data gap: Insights from a case study of cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, One Earth (2021). DOI: 10.1016/j.oneear.2021.11.007

Journal information: One Earth

Provided by Northwestern University

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[DD'eDeN aka note/nickname/alas_my_loves]

On Sunday, November 21, 2021 at 12:24:19 PM UTC-5, Mario Petrinovic wrote:

You don't know Hunter Biden.

https://nypost.com/2022/05/08/hollywood-lawyer-kevin-morris-paid-off-over-2m-of-hunter-bidens-taxes/

He'd sell his mother.


>
> --
> https://groups.google.com/g/human-evolution
> human-e...@googlegroups.com