The wars in the Congo were fought over Nickel and Diamonds. No one cared about Cobalt in most centuries. It was the shiny waste product of Nickel mines that sometimes artists enjoyed painting with. (Many blue paints use Cobalt. There are multiple reasons we associate the element Cobalt with "blue".) Even at the peak of the worst of Lithium Ion battery formulations "demand" for Cobalt almost all of it was sourced from Nickel mining "waste".
Which isn't to say that it isn't valid to talk about the conditions of mining Nickel and Diamonds, but people are always (in nearly every century) mining Nickel and Diamond. But blaming Cobalt (and in turn Lithium Ion batteries) for all of the worsts excesses of Nickel mines is a bit extreme. Cobalt is the "waste product". Nickel was always the primary reason for all the mining. (Nickel will likely always be the primary reason. Especially now as Lithium Ion formulations have mostly eliminated Cobalt in recent years.)
> The wars in the Congo were fought over Nickel and Diamonds
That's why I said the wars were over Congo's resources. Which by the way included its people and rubber.
> blaming Cobalt (and in turn Lithium Ion batteries)
I'm not blaming anyone.
I just reported the truth that there have been wars in the Congo over its resources and that there are armed groups that control its resources like cobalt today. The conditions of which are often horrific. Correcting the original who said cobalt mining is benign.
Cobalt can't be blamed, it's not alive.
If we're assigning blame, we should be blaming the Western corporate governance where it's trivial to whitewash where resources were extracted and how they were processed. If we insisted that our governments passed laws keeping corporations, and their executives, directly accountable, and requiring that they maintain a full chain of custody, then conditions on the ground in Congo would improve dramatically.
It's not nickel's fault, or the fault of diamonds, or that if electric cars or batteries. The fault is and has always been our own.
Which isn't to say that it isn't valid to talk about the conditions of mining Nickel and Diamonds, but people are always (in nearly every century) mining Nickel and Diamond. But blaming Cobalt (and in turn Lithium Ion batteries) for all of the worsts excesses of Nickel mines is a bit extreme. Cobalt is the "waste product". Nickel was always the primary reason for all the mining. (Nickel will likely always be the primary reason. Especially now as Lithium Ion formulations have mostly eliminated Cobalt in recent years.)