According to this website, roughly 135,000 electric vehicles will be sold this year. Tesla alone plans to sell about 500,000 in 2018. Cobalt will be needed for each one. Easy to see why there's a lot of attention on the cobalt industry, and why projected shortages are making people nervous.
Aside from the production shortfall, there's this other big problem. A year and a half ago, Amnesty International reported "children as young as seven working in dangerous conditions" producing cobalt in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
"Children told Amnesty International they worked for up to 12 hours a day in the mines, carrying heavy loads to earn between $1 and $2 US a day. In 2014, approximately 40,000 children worked in mines across southern DRC, many of them mining cobalt, according to UNICEF.
“Anyone with a smartphone [or electric vehicle] would be appalled to think that children as young as seven carrying out back-breaking work for 12 hours a day could be involved at some point in the making of it.”
photo: lcnewsgroup.com
(cont'd tomorrow)
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