[tomder55]

This is a book by Siddharth Kara. He is a senior fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health; and the author of 3 previous books on modern slavery .Kara travelled into the military controlled mining region ;and surreptitiously went to the mining sites several times to research his book.

Cobalt Red (papyruspub.com)

Cobalt is an essential mineral to making batteries for the Green New Deal .75% of the cobalt is mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)

Kara writes “This rare, silver metal is an essential component to almost every lithium-ion rechargeable battery made today,” “The Katanga region in the southeast corner of the Congo holds more reserves of cobalt than the rest of the planet combined.”
No other nation comes close.

Global demand for cobalt is enormous anf growing 24 nations have pledged to eliminate the sale of gas vehicles by 2040. They are using subsidies, regulations and mandates to force the transition .

Who's blood is being shed mining cobalt ? The people of the Congo are exploited into essentially slave labor . It is extractedby diesel fueled heavy equipment ...a fact often overlooked when people talk about clean green energy .... and"by the blistered hands of peasants using picks, shovels, and rebar" .
Also overlooked is the fact that the whole region gets polluted by the mining operation .

Blood is red ;and so is the nation that exploits the people of DRC ..... China. The political leaders of Congo have become very rich while the rest of the nation is one of the poorest in the world . 90% of the people cannot afford electricity for their homes let alone something like an EV.

China dominates the market in not only cobalt; but essentially all the materials like lithium, copper and nickel,need for the utopian green new deal .
Is China concerned with polluting the planet ? Hell NO ! They are building coal fired plants at a dizzying pace for their industries .
Ironically their EV manufacturer BYD uses coal fired energy to produce more EVs than Tesla.

China leads the world in EV adoption because China also leads the world in EV battery manufacture. Six of the top 10 EV battery companies are Chinese. The top two Chinese producers, CATL (Contemporary Amperex Technology Co.) and BYD (Build Your Dreams) account for half the global market.

China’s EV Domination Echoes Japan in the ’70s: Niall Ferguson - Bloomberg

The whole green energy revolution is a big lie.

Kara says that the mining operation in the Congo uses “slavery, child labor, forced labor, debt bondage, human trafficking, hazardous and toxic working conditions, pathetic wages, injury and death, and incalculable environmental harm.”
He says the Chinese owned mines “were secured either by a military force called the FARDC or the elite Republican Guard. Other industrial sites and many informal mining areas are guarded by an array of armed units, including the Congolese National Police, the mining police, private military contractors, and informal militias. … Perceived troublemakers can be arrested, tortured, or worse.”

Remember "blood diamonds "in South Africa ? The world united to end that by boycott . Blood cobalt is worse.