Latest / Saving the World From Bad Ideas / Bad Idea #54 "Shut down the cobalt mines" with Nicholas Niarchos

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Bad Idea #54 "Shut down the cobalt mines" with Nicholas Niarchos · Saving the World From Bad Ideas

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I have been to mines that sit directly in Apple's supply chain
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and watches people without shoes go go into these mines.
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I have watched people go with bags of cobalt and sell them to
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CDM and then a child had had mined it on the other side.
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And the iPhone is the great success story for Apple.
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Don't forget it. This success was built on the
0:22
backs of these kinds of labour conditions.
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If we start recycling all our material, which were admittedly
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a very, very long way off from what gets left in Congo, the
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only thing that I can see being left in Congo is a bunch of
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holes in the ground. Welcome to saving the world from
0:40
bad ideas. I'm Mark Linus, and I've had a
0:42
few bad ideas in my time. I used to go out in the night
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time to destroy GMO crops, and I also opposed nuclear power.
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But then when I looked at the science, I found I got it wrong.
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Oops. I've learned the hard way that
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none of us are right all the time.
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So now I'm here to challenge the assumptions that we all too
0:58
often take for granted because the future depends on us getting
1:01
it right. Welcome to Saving the World from
1:04
Bad Ideas. My guest today, joining us from
1:07
New York, is Nicholas Niakos, who is author of a new book
1:12
about the supply chain for lithium ion batteries in
1:16
particular. And the book's called The
1:18
Elements of Power, a story of war, technology and the dirtiest
1:22
supply chain on Earth. Nick, welcome.
1:25
Thank you so much for having me. Now, I particularly wanted to
1:28
have you on the show to challenge us.
1:32
Who enthusiasts for the electrotech, the clean tech
1:37
transition, which frankly seems to be the only chance we've got
1:42
of saving the Earth from planetary catastrophe, from
1:46
global warming. And of course, large scale
1:49
battery deployment is, is central to this because it's
1:52
what makes the clean energy transition possible by balancing
1:56
out the intermittency of renewables.
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So I'm very bullish about batteries and consequently, I'd
2:02
rather not have to think about how they're produced.
2:05
And so that's why I want to talk to you actually about the supply
2:09
chain to force us to confront some of the realities of who,
2:13
who is producing these batteries and who's also benefiting from
2:17
them. Now we have to have a bad idea.
2:19
And maybe that bad idea is, I don't know, it's got to fit on a
2:22
slide, but something about we shouldn't talk about the, the,
2:25
the supply chain for batteries because there's some really
2:28
quite extraordinary revelations that you that you come up with
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on the book. What do you think is a bad idea
2:32
that you're that you're that you're tackling in in this piece
2:35
of reportage? Yeah, I think the bad idea is
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not a a single idea. The idea is that the battery
2:43
supply chain as it exists today is virtuous.
2:46
I'm very bullish on batteries. I think batteries are
2:48
fascinating. I think they're they're, they're
2:51
amazing technology. And I think that produced
2:53
correctly, they can certainly be a very, very important tool in
2:57
the fight against climate change.
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I mean, in the end of the day, the world is going to become a
3:01
big AI data center where that's at least what we're told today.
3:04
So maybe all these points are moved.
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But the bad idea, I guess is, is the battery supply chain itself,
3:10
which arose from a series of decisions that that didn't seem
3:15
to be taken particularly consciously, but seem to be
3:19
driven by avarice essentially. Maybe to start at the beginning,
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explain to us what the elements are, so the the materials, the
3:30
minerals on the periodic table that go into making a lithium
3:34
ion battery. And then we'll talk about the
3:36
history of their development because you cover that also a
3:38
lot in the book, and that's also really interesting.
3:40
OK. So the elements that I focus on
3:44
are copper, cobalt, lithium, obviously nickel.
3:49
And then, you know, aside from what what are called the
3:52
transition metals, which are these, which are the metals that
3:56
that are used for electronics and for batteries and so on, are
3:59
also other other things like phosphates, which are used to
4:03
create these sort of newer types of lithium ion phosphate
4:06
battery. So these are things that come
4:08
from often easy to reach places, but in the case of some of them,
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they're in complicated and hard to reach, hard to access places
4:18
with problematic geopolitics. And the example that I focus on
4:23
most is cobalt in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is sort
4:26
of really focused there. There's about 70% of the world's
4:29
supply is in that country alone. Yeah.
4:33
And tell us then about how these batteries came to be developed,
4:37
because I was quite surprised to see that the lithium ion battery
4:42
was at least partly invented by Exxon, or at least a scientist
4:45
working for Exxon at the time. Yeah.
4:47
So the lithium ion battery, you're totally right, Mark.
4:50
Lithium ion battery was first developed by this sort of branch
4:54
of Exxon called Exxon Enterprises.
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And Exxon Enterprises did everything from developing
4:59
typewriters to developing these kind of newfangled batteries.
5:03
And they were looking for businesses that would shore up
5:08
Exxon if the company were to lose its main source of revenue,
5:13
which is which is oil. And they were specifically
5:16
looking at building an electric car already in the 1970s and
5:21
looking for a high-powered battery that would in fact power
5:24
that power that car. And they were worried about oil
5:28
running out and electricity being the, the, the way that you
5:31
powered your vehicles even at that point.
5:34
Then, of course, in the 1980s, it was oil, oil, oil all the
5:38
time. And they very quickly left
5:40
behind this project. But it's it it is a remarkable
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quirk of history that the the battery itself was developed by
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Exxon scientists sitting in a lab in Linden, NJ.
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And that's potentially quite ironic if the battery that that
5:54
Exxon developed ends up putting Exxon out of business maybe a
5:58
few decades after the fact. But it certainly seems to be
6:01
heading in that direction. Well, I mean, I think that it's
6:03
a, it's a long time before Exxon goes out of business and we see
6:07
these two wars that have just been fought in this year alone.
6:10
And, and there's one, there's one word and one resource that
6:14
is very much at the centre of those wars and that is oil.
6:18
So I don't, I don't see them being being put out of business
6:22
yet by the lithium ion battery. And also of course companies
6:26
seem to find their way into renewables.
6:29
So it seems like they probably will be able to to to to make a
6:31
reverse track whenever whenever they feel feel the expediency.
6:35
Maybe, but oil companies don't have much track record of
6:38
success in renewables. They keep divesting from it
6:40
because they can't make it work. So the process does seem to be 1
6:44
of industry disruption actually of new entrants into the market.
6:47
And so how, how did the lithium ion battery, at least the
6:50
prototype, the chemistry that was developed in Exxon, how did
6:53
that then eventually get commercialized, scaled up and to
6:58
the stage now where it's really hitting the big time?
7:00
So there were a couple of researchers at the University of
7:03
Oxford who basically figured out that if you put cobalt into the
7:07
cathode, which is the positive electrode of the battery, it
7:10
would become more stable and more powerful basically.
7:14
And that battery cathode was then sort of then there was a
7:18
researcher in Japan who realized that if you could use that
7:20
battery cathode and couple it with graphite in the anode,
7:25
which is which is an element didn't building block that we
7:28
didn't talk about earlier on. And this is also geostrategic
7:32
necessity. I mean, people looking for
7:34
graphite around the world put into batteries.
7:37
If you put graphite in the negative electrode, they become
7:42
even more stable and at that point fairly safe.
7:45
And then there was this sort of arms race between this Japanese
7:48
scientists corporation and Sony, which is the the big tech
7:53
electronics giant of the 80s and 90s.
7:56
And Sony basically put it into a camcorder.
7:59
And then the rest is history. I mean, it's they basically
8:02
everybody realized that they wanted these batteries in their
8:05
devices. And this coincided with cell
8:08
phones becoming very popular mobile phones and people started
8:12
using these phones and, and, and putting these batteries in them
8:16
and realizing that they can last for much longer.
8:18
I mean, I remember still old nickel cadmium powered phones
8:23
and you had to charge them every, you know, two hours or
8:26
something like that. And lithium ion batteries, of
8:29
course, made things like the iPhone possible and they made
8:34
things like electric vehicles possible, basically.
8:37
I mean, there had been previous examples of electric vehicles
8:41
such as the EV1, which was a General Motors electric vehicle
8:46
in the 90s that had been basically shattered because
8:51
General Motors was worried that people didn't want a car with a
8:54
very, very small range. There are also a bunch of
8:57
theories about General Motors was kowtowing to the oil
9:00
companies and so on it. Wasn't a film called Who Killed
9:04
the Electric Car? Which was vaguely
9:05
conspiratorial? I certainly think I remember
9:07
saying something. Absolutely, yeah.
9:09
Who killed the electric car, which is which is I mean, it
9:12
was, it was sort of high, high paced and for first pace.
9:15
And but then, but then when you zoom out slightly, I mean, you
9:18
realize that they had basically leased a very, very small amount
9:22
of these cars. And I think what you were
9:26
talking about earlier is that that, you know, oil companies
9:28
have met, never made renewables work.
9:30
I think in the same way GM didn't see the EV1 working
9:35
because they couldn't do this at the scale of their other
9:38
enterprises. It's basically, you know,
9:41
internal combustion cars just work for them in this huge scale
9:44
and and oil companies, you know, oil just works at this massive
9:48
scale for them. So they think, well, why are we
9:50
wasting all this time and money on this like small sideshow.
9:53
And then of course they were accused of of killing it.
9:56
But that car had a lead lead acid battery.
9:58
So, so, so lithium ion basically makes the electric car as we
10:03
know, again, as we know it today, possible that had you
10:06
know, there are other versions of electric cars that existed as
10:10
a document in the book from the 70s onwards.
10:13
And of course, you know, at the beginning of the 20th century,
10:16
there were tons of electric cars.
10:18
Even Henry Ford's wife had had an had an electric vehicle back
10:23
in sort of 1998 or something like that.
10:25
They. Were going off lead acid
10:27
batteries in those days, were they?
10:28
Those were all lead acid batteries, yeah.
10:30
And that of course, putting lithium ion batteries in a car
10:33
is Tesla. That was a big innovation that
10:37
they added to the mix. And one of the unsung heroes of
10:41
electrification is the is the Chevy Volt, which is a sort of
10:47
extended range sort of petrol electric vehicle hybrid.
10:52
It's technically not a hybrid and I can never really
10:54
understand why you can't call it a hybrid, but but but
10:58
essentially that's what it is. And that you that's kind of
11:03
really popularized the lithium ion battery in cars starting in
11:06
the early twenty 10s. So it's the power density of
11:10
lithium ion batteries that was the great game changer, right,
11:13
That made it possible to see large scale electric
11:16
transportation, is that right? Absolutely.
11:20
Explain a bit about the electrochemistry of this.
11:22
I don't think people even necessarily know what ions are.
11:25
So how does it work in terms of electrons and the the actual
11:29
chemistry within the battery? So essentially ions of subatomic
11:33
particles and they sort of nest within the cobalt containing
11:37
cathode. And this has a structure which
11:40
is described as lamella, which if you think about those, you
11:43
know, tiles on a roof or something like that, it's
11:45
they're kind of like slotted within, within, under,
11:48
underneath the tiles on the roof.
11:50
Or, or one of the examples given is Mongol armor, which is, which
11:55
is which, which I thought was actually quite nice.
11:59
But, but essentially these ions are slotted within, within,
12:02
within that structure. And then they move across an
12:05
electrolyte, which is, which is usually an liquid, a liquid.
12:09
Now in solid-state batteries, it's actually a solid.
12:11
So it's something called a perovskite, which essentially
12:14
has these, if you can think about these ions moving through
12:17
these tunnels and then it moves to a negative electrode, which
12:21
is which is the graphite containing structure.
12:24
Through that process, electricity is released,
12:26
essentially. Yeah, and the electricity tries
12:27
to find another way around, doesn't it?
12:29
So if you plug something into the allode and the cathode, then
12:31
the electricity will go between them and essentially discharge
12:34
the battery. And it's that processor in
12:36
reverse which charges the battery.
12:38
So what are the elements of the supply chain that you really
12:41
think people should know more about then We we do hear a lot
12:44
about cobalt. And in fact, I'm reminded that
12:47
Dua Lipa did an interview with Tim Cook.
12:49
I don't know if you saw this, the CEO of Apple and she, she
12:52
asked him, can you assure me that there's not been any child
12:57
labor going into the cobalt that's in my iPhone?
13:00
And he said, yes, I can. It was pretty unambiguous from
13:03
Tim Cook there. Do do you think he was telling
13:05
the truth in that statement at that time?
13:07
I mean, this is about a year ago.
13:09
It's very difficult. Apple will argue you up the
13:12
wazoo on this, but my contention is that at that time, maybe not
13:19
today, you couldn't argue that they had a company called
13:23
Zhejiang Huayu in their supply chain, which at the time was
13:29
directly buying from mines. I saw this with my own eyes.
13:34
It's subsidiary CDM, which made its name by buying from
13:38
artisanal mines. Now to artisanal mines, we have
13:41
to explain are these small scale mines in the Democratic Republic
13:45
of the Congo at which there is child labour, there is abuse and
13:50
exploitation of of women who are used to wash minerals.
13:54
Often pregnant women will sit in these kind of toxic rivers
13:58
washing minerals there. There are mine collapses.
14:01
It's super unsafe. These people are paid nothing
14:04
basic. I mean they're paid less than a
14:05
dollar a day often and they are selling to these sellers who are
14:13
either affiliated directly with CDM or selling themselves to
14:16
CDMCDM is a subsidiary of this company which is listed in
14:20
Apple's supply chain, which is crazy.
14:22
I forget which year it is 23 or 24.
14:25
I mean, it sits there in the supply chain and said, they say,
14:27
Oh, well, we've, we've audited all these smelters, including
14:31
Zhejiang Huayu Cobalt Limited. And it's, I mean, if Dua Lipa
14:36
had sat there and said, well, what's this on the sheet?
14:38
How can you tell me that that there is no child labour in the
14:42
supply chain? I have been to mines that sit
14:46
directly in Apple's supply chain and watches people without shoes
14:50
go into these mines. I have watched people go with
14:54
bags of cobalt and sell them to CDM and then a child had had
14:59
mined it on the other side. I mean, so I think that I think
15:02
that for him to say confidently no at that point was certainly,
15:10
certainly perhaps wishful thinking.
15:12
Now Apple has said that they now use 100% recycled cobalt in
15:19
their phones. That may be the case, but that
15:24
cobalt from the recycled phones may itself have originated at a
15:30
mine in Congo back in the day. Now the question is, I don't
15:33
think you necessarily recycling should carry this sort of load
15:37
of guilt around with it, etcetera.
15:39
But the question is if we start recycling all our material,
15:42
which we're admittedly a very, very long way off from what gets
15:46
left in Congo. And the only thing that I can
15:49
see being left in Congo is a bunch of holes in the ground.
15:52
So I think for companies like Apple to say, oh, well, we're
15:56
being virtuous now. We're recycling, blah, blah,
15:58
blah, this entire supply chain, this this success, I mean, the
16:03
the iPhone is the great success story for Apple.
16:05
Don't forget it. This success was built on the
16:08
backs of these kinds of Labor conditions.
16:12
And if not these labor conditions, they also buy from
16:14
industrial mines. Industrial mines, you know, have
16:18
all kinds of problems connected to the way that they were
16:21
acquired back in the day. And again, we're talking about
16:24
10 years ago now. We're not talking about talking
16:26
about today. They have contributed to us to,
16:30
to, to, to issues of corruption and so on.
16:33
But to just wash your hands a bit and say, well, you know, the
16:36
Chinese did it and this was Chinese mining is missing the
16:40
fact entirely. I mean, it's basically saying,
16:43
you know, these resources are ours and, and we're not going to
16:46
we're not going to help the country.
16:48
And I think that there is some sort of obligation for companies
16:52
like Apple and whatever other country companies, you know,
16:56
Samsung and so on that are using cobalt from the DRC to at least
17:01
look at the country and say how can we improve conditions there
17:04
and how can we try and create an economy.
17:07
And there has been very, very little of that.
17:09
I mean, there has been, there has been lip service paid
17:12
through a small foundation, which is called the Fair Cobalt
17:16
Alliance, which does good work, but it's very, very limited.
17:20
And, and they're mainly funded by the mining companies.
17:24
Fun enough down the, so you know, as you go and you look at
17:27
the mind, the big mining companies that are involved in
17:29
the supply chain that they've done the most work to try and
17:32
try and work with the communities.
17:35
And of course, they're much, much smaller than a company like
17:38
Apple. One of the things I really like
17:40
in the book is that you humanize it.
17:42
You talk about individuals who people who actually are the ones
17:46
working in in the DRC in the Congo.
17:49
And one of the stars of your cobalt artisanal miners is
17:55
Adelan Kajumbo, if I pronounce that rightly.
17:57
And I really like the way that you tell his back story and he's
18:01
a real character. Describe for people who are
18:05
hearing this or watching this, who this guy is and how you use
18:09
him to illustrate the conditions for artisanal miners in the
18:13
Congo. Yeah, Odinon Khedrumbekilanga.
18:16
He's a small scale artisanal miner based in Kawasi.
18:21
And he started mining very young.
18:23
He was 16 or 17 essentially when he started getting involved in
18:27
mining. His father died of malaria.
18:30
He was, you know, one of the many millions, hundreds,
18:33
hundreds of millions of people who die from one of the real
18:38
effects of, of, of poverty in the country, which is, which is,
18:41
you know, these communicable diseases.
18:44
And he then sort of went on this kind of journey to the town from
18:50
he he's from a town called Lubumbashi.
18:52
And then he travelled several hours W to a town called
18:56
Culwaisi, which is very, very rich in cobalt and copper.
18:59
And this was in must have been around 2000 and seven, 2008
19:05
some. So really, you know, around the
19:07
time of the iPhone coming out. Funny enough, just just thought
19:11
about that because we've just been talking about iPhones
19:13
coming out and becomes completely kind of ensconced in
19:17
the, in, in the artisanal mining industry.
19:20
And he joins this little team and he works, you know, with
19:25
everything that he's, he's got. He has, he, he has two
19:29
daughters. He wants his children to not
19:32
live in the same conditions that he does.
19:34
So basically he's working for the future.
19:37
What he realizes over this time period is that he's not really
19:39
making any money. He's he's not being, he's not
19:42
able to save any money. He's basically just able to
19:45
survive for himself and his family.
19:48
And that is the situation for so many people in the DRC, so many
19:56
people in this industry, is that they are essentially living
19:59
under conditions of wage servitude, almost indentured
20:03
servitude, because the pay is so poor.
20:06
Because the conditions are so unstable.
20:09
The other thing that he told me was just how dangerous, how
20:13
perilous the work that he was doing was.
20:18
I mean, he said the thing that I'm really going to hold with me
20:20
for the rest of my life is the nightmares.
20:22
The nightmares of these mine collapses in which hundreds of
20:27
people, you know, yesterday there was just a mine collapse
20:30
at a mine in Rubaia in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo,
20:34
200 people died. Over 200 people died at that
20:37
mine collapse in January, another collapse of that mine
20:40
also 200 people died. I mean, this is a daily fact of
20:45
life for miners and small scale miners in the DRC is just
20:49
deeply, deeply, deeply unsafe working conditions.
20:53
And again, the people that really make the profit off these
20:56
minerals at the other end of the supply chain are not the
20:59
Congolese. Well, I was going to ask you
21:01
about that because, as you say, at the other end of the supply
21:05
chain, you've got the battery barons, if I can call them that,
21:07
the Elon Musks of this world who are 100 billionaires now
21:14
probably on their way to being trillionaires.
21:17
It's just, it's so spectacularly unjust that people are risking
21:23
their lives on a daily basis to earn less than a dollar a day to
21:26
actually dig out the materials so that then making these
21:29
oligarchs some of the richest people on the globe.
21:32
And you, you know, you can highlight this and talk about
21:37
it. And I think people are generally
21:38
aware of it, but there doesn't seem to be anything we can
21:41
actually do, I mean, do about it.
21:43
Is it? Is it totally impossible to have
21:45
a fairer deal for for miners who are actually the ones digging
21:49
out these minerals? They think under current
21:52
political conditions in which Donald Trump is wholesale doing
21:58
deals with the government of the DRC with very, very little
22:03
investment in. And, and, and I'll put a big
22:06
asterisk there because there is, there is AUS Congressman Chris
22:10
Smith, who is very, very involved in trying to get a
22:13
better deal for, for, for, for mine workers in the, in the DRC.
22:18
However, if you look at the mining deals that are that have
22:22
been done with, with, with Congo in the last four months,
22:26
basically, I mean, December was the big one.
22:29
The fact is that it doesn't look like conditions will get any
22:33
better at the moment. And I think that this is a
22:35
governmental issue. So what can we do?
22:38
We can vote for candidates who are, are better placed to, to
22:42
deal with this issue or who speak, speak to this issue
22:45
directly. Again, there are very few, I
22:48
think, you know, writing to politicians and so on.
22:50
I mean, this is probably an old fashioned solution, but showing
22:53
that you care, that's a, that's a very important part of it.
22:57
You know, I guess we could consume less.
23:00
That's very difficult. That's much, much easier said
23:02
than done, I think. Well.
23:03
Hasn't, hasn't, I mean, there's been pressure on Apple.
23:06
Obviously Apple's had to work on its the reputation of its supply
23:10
chain. Otherwise, Dua Liquid wouldn't
23:12
have been asking the question about coal.
23:14
So it's it's well understood that this is an issue.
23:16
Why don't these big companies, whether it's Apple or Tesla or
23:21
BYD or any of the companies, the huge multinational companies
23:26
which are using lithium ion batteries, why don't they try
23:28
and make sure that the mine workers get paid better and have
23:32
better conditions? Yeah, I mean Tesla just just as
23:36
an aside, I mean Tesla buys most of its Cobolt from industrial
23:41
mines basically, or I, I would say almost all of their Cobolt
23:45
and has has done for a long time.
23:46
But so put Tesla to one side and that's a price consideration.
23:49
And that's because they want a stable feed and so on and so
23:52
forth. And I think their, their, their
23:55
theory is that in aggregate, if you buy, you know, from an
23:58
industrial mine, you're not, you're not subject to price
24:00
shocks. Other people, I think, think
24:02
that it's better to buy it. But when it's cheap and that
24:05
kind of thing and stockpile, Chinese definitely have
24:08
stockpiling ambitions always. But I think that I think the
24:12
argument there is just is just that it's, it's, it's, you know,
24:16
it's money. That's like, that's the basic,
24:20
the basic answer to this, it's it's dealing with, this is very,
24:24
very complicated. It exposes people to risk.
24:29
I mean, as I try and point out in the book, I mean, the book is
24:32
the book is complicated because this issue is complicated and
24:35
it's really difficult to think through it and it's really
24:38
difficult to think through solutions.
24:40
I, I wouldn't pretend that I have, you know, anywhere near
24:43
the amount of solutions that that would, that would take to,
24:46
to, to solve this issue. But it requires real engagement
24:49
on the ground with communities, with community leaders, with
24:54
mining collectives and so on. And it's just, I think because
24:58
of liability, because of, because nobody wants to be the
25:02
first. There are very few companies
25:04
that, that, that, that, that, that will actually do this.
25:08
And much easier to just say, well, you know, we bought these
25:12
materials. We think they come from a safe
25:14
source, which is, which is what Apple says and it meets our
25:17
standards and we're going to make an iPhone to make a profit
25:20
out of it. I think that's the, that's
25:22
basically what it does is that the supply chain has been
25:25
created out of circumstance. It has not, you know,
25:29
traditional business, business business ethics have not been
25:33
applied to it because it involves countries that are far
25:38
away and difficult to to report on.
25:42
And frankly, you know, I think Apple doesn't want to be
25:46
involved in sending its people or its representatives to
25:50
countries like the DRC for deep on the ground in both
25:53
involvement in communities. They're much, much easier for
25:57
them to just say, well, it's the fault of the mining companies or
26:01
it's the thought of smelters or the mineral producers or
26:04
whatever it is. I don't think people understand
26:07
and I don't actually understand what the relative weight of
26:12
artisanal versus industrial mines are and what the
26:14
differences are on these processes.
26:16
I mean, are people paid better in industrial mines where
26:20
they're presumably salaried workers years?
26:23
Yeah. So explain, explain the
26:24
difference in these processes and how how people how people
26:30
work within them. OK.
26:31
So artisanal mines around 20% of production out of the DRC.
26:36
That number shifts around a lot on a yearly basis, but that's a
26:39
kind of aggregate number. I think some years it can go
26:43
higher, many years it can go lower.
26:46
At the moment they've tried to ban all artisanal production in
26:49
the DRC. That is not really going the way
26:52
that everybody thinks it is. Just, you know, anecdotally,
26:56
there are there are a whole bunch of miners who are still
26:59
working in, in the town of Coalways.
27:01
And because cobalt prices are very high, people are involved
27:05
in this in, in this practice. And it seems like people are
27:08
still buying and stockpiling artisanal cobalt within the DRC
27:12
and smuggling it out as well. And basically, they've tried to
27:15
stop trucks with Cobalt getting out of the country.
27:18
But the but the the these mine collapses you were talking about
27:21
with hundreds of deaths. These are the artisanal.
27:24
These are all in the artisanal mines.
27:25
Yes, I mean that there have been mine collapses in the industrial
27:28
mines, that's a that's a different story.
27:30
The industrial mines are run by big mining companies, most of
27:34
them Chinese at the moment, but notable exceptions being the
27:37
Glencoe mine, the ERG which is a Kazakh mine, Kazakh, Russian,
27:42
some sort of. You mean in Kazakhstan or in
27:45
DRC? Oh, India in DRC, yeah.
27:47
And then so you have these industrial miners who are
27:50
basically going down with, with sort of metal tools again, being
27:55
paid very, very little. And on the other side of things,
27:58
you have these industrial mines which are run basically like
28:00
mines all around the world. I mean, they're run to
28:03
international standards. There are some issues with
28:06
subcontractors. There have been issues with, you
28:08
know, spills. These are issues that also
28:11
affect other other places. You know, the subcontractor
28:14
issue is, you know, fairly problematic on some Chinese
28:18
mines and less problematic on the other mines.
28:21
But generally people are paid quite well.
28:23
Unfortunately there are very well.
28:25
Also fortunately for the mining companies, I guess there are
28:27
very few jobs on those mines because they are very automated,
28:32
they use modern technology and so on.
28:34
So the hundreds, if you ban artisel mining, I mean there are
28:39
by one estimate that I heard and this was back in 2019, 160,000
28:44
people involved in artisanal mining.
28:46
And if you extrapolate that to family size, you know, you get a
28:50
couple of million people relying on this industry.
28:53
I would say most people in the South actually, you know, below
28:57
the kind of upper strata rely on this industry because it's
29:01
because it kind of it is the lifeblood of the economy.
29:05
So you can't just get rid of it wholesale.
29:08
You have to find something else for these people to do,
29:10
otherwise they're going to starve.
29:11
And one of the solutions that I heard most vehemently expressed
29:17
was that the country was fertile and that agriculture could be a
29:22
big boon to economy that other people also talked about, you
29:26
know, small manufacturing industries and so on.
29:30
But at the moment, it's already focused on mining.
29:32
And this is the kind of this is the problem when you have an
29:35
economy based on one single industry and one single thing
29:41
basically, which is digging, digging minerals out of the
29:44
ground. The Congolese government has
29:47
said, look, we want to produce batteries in in Katanga.
29:51
Instead of saying, OK, what is the best way of of employing
29:54
people, it's just saying this is the industry that we want to be
29:58
really involved in. And the fact is that producing
30:01
batteries is, is very complicated, requires a huge
30:04
amount of investment and then also requires a stable power
30:08
source, which they don't have. I mean, they're blackouts all
30:10
the time in that part of the world.
30:12
So it's also a, it's also a problem of economic planning on
30:16
the, on the local level as well. You know, I don't want to solely
30:19
point the finger and finger external act as I think the book
30:22
also points out that there are a lot, a lot of problems of
30:25
governance within DRC and, and, and highlighting those problems
30:29
is important because just wholesale agreeing with them in
30:34
the manner of, you know, the the US government and other
30:38
governments that have engaged with the DRC and kind of
30:41
certifying these absurdly corrupt elections, for example.
30:45
I mean, for example, in the last election, there were people who
30:48
had voting machines in their houses and they were feeding
30:52
them with ballots for the president, you know, saying that
30:55
that was a wonderful election. And congratulate, congratulating
30:58
the the president on, on winning an election like that is
31:02
definitely a there's a situation in which, you know, foreign
31:07
governments can say, look, this is this was a corrupt election
31:10
and, and we knew it and we're not going to, we're not going
31:12
to, we're not going to congratulate you for this.
31:15
Well, I can't say Trump stepping in to insist on clean elections,
31:19
that's he's been trashed talking democracy in the US, where it
31:22
actually functions fairly well as far as I can see.
31:24
But Zaire, as it was, and DRC, as it later became, has had a
31:29
pretty check of history, to say the least.
31:34
There was Mobutu, who was the dictator up until, well, you,
31:38
you can tell me the dates. But that was essentially an
31:40
institutionalized kleptocracy. They they were, you know, it was
31:44
a country run by thieves. And but how well, I don't know
31:47
whether we should start the story even back in the colonial
31:49
era or even in fact, you go in the book all the way back to the
31:52
African kingdoms who themselves were running slaves, killing
31:57
people in large numbers. This isn't just a European
32:00
phenomenon, right? And in fact, also to dig out,
32:03
dig out minerals. So it goes.
32:04
It goes right back. It goes, it goes right back into
32:08
history. And that was the fascinating
32:09
thing. I mean, I got I kind of for for
32:12
several months got sort of really, really into pre colonial
32:16
history, which and and and it was fascinating because the way
32:20
it was recorded, a lot of the history was recorded was on
32:24
these kind of memory boards. It's using not using writing,
32:27
but using these kind of beats attached to boards, which then
32:31
had kind of songs attack attached those and those were
32:35
kind of all these they were called, they're called praise
32:37
phrases. And this is the way that these
32:39
ancient kings of the Luba, the Lunda, the Yekke kingdoms were
32:45
were remembered on and continue to be remembered actually by
32:48
indigenous people to the country.
32:50
But you're right. I mean, there's that, that, you
32:52
know, there's certainly an extractive logic to to many,
32:57
many of the kingdoms, practically all of the the big
32:59
kingdoms that that existed in that part of the world
33:03
centuries. I think what colonialism did was
33:05
kind of institutionalized that in and and and codify that and
33:11
also make that extraction accessible to outside investors
33:17
who were able to through complicated share structures and
33:21
so on access. I mean, think about it, Unio
33:25
Mignere in the 1950s, which is the Belgian mining company had
33:30
returns that were sort that were Apple like in their magnitude in
33:35
the 50s. I think I have the numbers in
33:37
the book somewhere. So these were, these were great
33:39
investments for people in European stock markets and and
33:44
that really is the innovation of colonialism.
33:47
And obviously there were innovations in brutality and so
33:50
on. But the insulation of investors
33:55
from that brutality, which is, which is actually precisely what
33:59
we've been talking about with Apple and the supply chain was
34:02
the innovation of colonialism. And it has remained.
34:05
It has. Those structures have remained
34:08
in place up until today, first through the kleptocratic
34:12
government of Mobutu, which ended in 1997, and then through
34:16
these kind of governments that tried to put Congo back together
34:20
after. Well, that's a generous way of
34:22
putting it. Again, kleptocratic governments
34:24
that tried to put Congo back together after a series of very,
34:28
very violent wars and wars that in fact continue today basically
34:32
in one form or another. I think I saw a couple of
34:36
reviews of your book where they complain that you spend too much
34:39
time going down sidetracks about colonialism stuff, but I
34:42
actually do think it's an important part of the story.
34:45
Yeah, I mean, I, I, I just want to jump in on that review.
34:48
I mean, the, I mean, the, that quote was sort of taken out of
34:53
context. I mean, he said, well, he seems
34:55
to just discover that colonialism was bad.
34:58
The the the point of that. Much review you're talking about
35:01
though. Oh, there's a, there's a review
35:03
in the New York Times. The, the, the point of that
35:06
quote was, was to show that extraction for profit.
35:12
So Leopold, a lot of what happens in Congo is that people
35:17
come in with, with, with so, you know, charitable motives or, you
35:22
know, they're coming on a civilizing mission or whatever
35:25
it is. And, and, and as famously A
35:28
civilizing mission, which is, which is, which is Conrad
35:31
talking, talking in heart of Darkness.
35:33
But they're coming on these missions to bring good things to
35:36
DRC. And then it's revealed that
35:38
they're actually they're for profit.
35:40
And the point of that was that Leopold was at the time was
35:43
saying, oh, well, I'm doing this for charity.
35:45
And then I was I was drawing comparisons with.
35:47
Tell us who Leopold. Tell us who Leopold was, because
35:49
people don't know that necessarily.
35:50
Yeah, forgive me. King Leopold the second of
35:52
Belgium, right? This is Belgians king.
35:54
Let's see, when you get very close to the to the mind face,
35:57
it's hard to see that the entire ore body, I suppose.
36:01
But but yeah, no, King Leopold the second of Belgium who
36:06
essentially took control of Congo, saying that he was going
36:10
to do charitable things there and bring free trade and get rid
36:14
of slavery and in fact subjugated Congo to perhaps the
36:17
worst form of slavery in its history.
36:20
Up to 10 million people were killed during King Leopold's
36:23
period. And because.
36:24
Roughly sometime in the 19th century, right?
36:26
It goes from 1885 to 19 O 8 when the Belgian parliament actually
36:31
steps in and says, look, this will not do, we're going to take
36:34
this over as a colony for ourselves because you have been
36:37
so brutal. What kinds of things?
36:39
Were happening I mean wasn't there amputations, beheading,
36:42
slavery. I mean, it's incredible that
36:45
King of European King would have a personal colony and then run
36:50
it with such horrific levels of brutality.
36:53
A personal colony the size of Western Europe I mean it's a
36:56
giant colony and it was run with with incredible brutality.
37:00
But again, back to this point about the insulation.
37:03
Leopold never stepped foot into DRC or went to what is now the
37:07
DRC and into his colony. He sat there and made profit.
37:12
And I'm sure he was aware of the brutality and certainly by the
37:15
end he was aware of the brutality.
37:18
But he he was insulated from it. He was insulated by distance.
37:22
He was insulated by the fact that, you know, his companies
37:26
were making huge amounts of money off this.
37:27
So in the end of the day, the point about colonialism and I
37:32
think it was important to talk about colonialism.
37:34
I, I disagree with that reviewer.
37:36
I think it's really important to talk about colonialism because
37:40
these structures and these systems remain and they are
37:43
embedded and they are part of the way that we relate to the,
37:47
to the DRC today. And I think that that is fully
37:51
apparent when you look at the fact that one of the biggest
37:54
mining companies, sorry, one of the biggest European processing
37:58
companies for transition metals, including Congolese cobalt is
38:02
Yuma Core, which is a company that that is the the successor
38:08
company to the Belgian. I mean, that is just proof in
38:12
itself. There are just so many other
38:13
sort of shadow structures and also concrete structures that
38:17
remain from the days of colonialism.
38:19
And so I think it's important to talk about it.
38:21
It's important to insist on it. And it's important to look at
38:24
Congo through that lens today, because without it, you lose
38:28
context. And you say, ah, well, it's just
38:30
an African country in which everything's chaos.
38:33
And then you get into the same thing where you're just blaming
38:35
Africans for their own stupidity or something like that.
38:38
I mean, I, I, I find it a very, very, very dangerous path to go
38:41
down to deny the, the negative effects of colonialism.
38:45
I think you need to investigate them.
38:47
I think you need to to understand exactly how that was
38:49
happening. Well, and now the colonists are
38:52
the Rwandans to a certain extent.
38:53
There's been the civil war in the eastern part of the Congo,
38:56
which seems to be. It's almost like we've heard
38:59
about conflict diamonds. This is almost like conflict
39:01
minerals, isn't it? Where you've got different
39:03
warring parties coming into the region and essentially setting
39:07
up there to to exploit the mineral wealth.
39:10
Yeah, I mean to exploit the mineral.
39:13
Well wealth is, is is interesting.
39:15
I think that minerals fuel conflict.
39:19
I think they're not the reason I I there.
39:22
There's a big argument which I disagree with, that the Rwandans
39:25
are just attacking Eastern DRC in order to get the, the, the
39:29
rare minerals. I think the rare minerals
39:31
actually what they, the Rwandans have strategic objectives which
39:35
are not just, you know, we want to come in and take the gold and
39:38
the coltan and the copper and whatever.
39:41
They actually believe that they need a buffer state or they
39:45
believe that they should rule Eastern DRC or whatever it is.
39:49
They have these kind of grand strategic and ambitions which
39:52
are, which are kind of almost absurd empire building in
39:56
mentality. If you were sitting in Kigali,
39:59
the capital of Rwanda, you might say.
40:00
Well, it's for our own safety because we had the Iranian
40:03
genocide and we don't want it to happen again.
40:05
I mean, in, in, in many ways, uh, Rwanda and Israel have have
40:10
some, some similarities and there are some, there are some
40:12
very close connections between those two, those two countries,
40:15
but without getting waylaid in that side pocket.
40:19
The minerals fuel the conflict because they allow these
40:22
militias to the, the Rwandans fund to make a huge amount of
40:28
profit very, very quickly. And they use that profit to
40:31
recycle into, you know, their own command and control
40:34
structures and their own, they are able, you know, they're able
40:37
to buy weapons and so on using revenues from that.
40:41
So yes, the minerals are very much part of that conflict.
40:45
I wouldn't say that the invasion is just because they want the
40:48
minerals. I think that's, I think that's,
40:50
that that has that has been deployed as an argument.
40:53
And I, I don't think that that's why the run, I, I think the
40:56
runners have their specific grievances in Eastern DLC that
41:01
they're trying to, that they're trying to work out in a horrible
41:04
way. I've I've never been to Eastern
41:07
DLC, I've been to Kinshasa. I imagine it's pretty different.
41:11
I mean, I've, I've done a fair amount of work in different
41:14
parts of Africa, but describe the what it's like to operate
41:18
in, in some of these locations in Lubumbashi or, or Kalaweisi
41:21
or other places. What was it like as a reporter
41:24
to actually try and operate to to gather your material, to
41:28
interview people and so on? Uh, so Eastern DRC is, is a
41:31
complicated place to operate. Uh, you know, I was in a town
41:34
that was attacked by rebels. You know, you're constantly
41:38
thinking about your security, there are a lot of troops
41:40
everywhere, etcetera, etcetera. And at the time also there was
41:44
Ebola. There are, you know, 120 plus
41:47
militias, including ones linked to ISIS.
41:50
I mean, it's a conflict reporting scenario.
41:53
The South of the DRC is very different.
41:56
I mean, it's this kind of, you know, there are rebels, but
41:59
they're very, very integrated into, into society.
42:02
So you don't really understand who is rebel and who is not.
42:07
There are no defined front lines of aside from perhaps a few
42:10
villages hidden in national parks where rebel leaders are
42:14
kind of camped out. And these, you know, these towns
42:18
are sort of mining towns. I mean, they're, they're rough,
42:20
tough kind of places in which people are there to make a lot
42:25
of money. You know, there is, there is, of
42:28
course, insecurity on the streets, but but generally
42:31
quite, you know, I mean, you, you've been to Contrasa.
42:34
I mean, it's a the, the DRC is, is, is an amazing place and
42:38
people are kind of people are people make so much with so
42:43
little and what what is what is what is incredible to me is just
42:47
the resilience of the people there.
42:49
And, you know, I love going out and listening to music and so
42:53
on. It's not, it's not like, it's
42:55
not like you're living in, you know, constant conflict.
42:57
Being in the South of the South of the DRC.
43:00
However, reporting there is difficult when it comes with its
43:02
own series of challenges. Of course, as I talk about in
43:05
the book, I was detained and arrested and and then kicked out
43:10
of the country for trying to figure out to what extent are
43:14
the rebels, the southern separatists, and these are
43:17
people who believe that the wealth of the South is being
43:21
stolen. To what extent of those people
43:24
are making money off mining. And there's some evidence that I
43:28
found that they were second degree making money off mining.
43:31
And I wanted to confirm that evidence.
43:34
And then I got arrested because I think arrested is not entirely
43:38
correct. I think I was, I was, I was
43:41
snatched by the secret police. So yeah, I mean, I think it's
43:44
it's, you know, working there is is complicated because.
43:47
Oh yeah. I.
43:48
Just want to what's it like to be snatched by the secret police
43:52
in DRC? It's fortunately something
43:53
that's never happened to me. At the, at the same, it's, it's
43:57
terrifying and it's also because it's DRC, it's it's got this
44:02
element of just complete confusion to it.
44:05
Nobody seems to know what's going on.
44:08
And I remember the feeling of just being completely lost,
44:14
speaking to people who really didn't understand why I was
44:17
being detained. And I thought, well, you know,
44:20
if I can kind of work my way up the, the chain of command and
44:26
speak to the, the highest officials here, maybe they'll
44:30
understand and maybe I'll be able to answer their questions
44:32
and maybe they'll be able to let me go because I wasn't doing
44:34
anything wrong. I mean, it was, I was, I was, I
44:37
was doing an interview at the time I was arrested.
44:39
And I, I realized as I worked my way up to the, the train of the
44:44
command command, in fact, to the very top of the secret police,
44:48
that I have been arrested for reasons that were completely
44:54
random. Basically, maybe I had been
44:57
arrested for to use as leverage in an upcoming trade deal the US
45:02
or they had hoped that that I might be leveraged.
45:04
Maybe I'd been arrested because I had been interviewing people
45:07
that they didn't want me to speak to.
45:09
Maybe I've been arrested because I was looking at the
45:11
presidential family ownership, presidential families ownership
45:15
of mines probably in, in my estimation, actually it was some
45:20
combination of the three, but it was never really articulated why
45:24
I was being taken. And I realized when I was
45:28
finally interviewed by the chief of the secret police that this
45:32
was the blind leading the blind. And this it was a state of total
45:37
confusion and chaos at that agency.
45:40
And you know, they've made so many blundered sense that I feel
45:43
that they haven't haven't really changed their ways and they are
45:46
blanket repressive because that is essentially the way that the
45:51
state functions. It's just repression as a means
45:55
of existence rather than trying to actually think about what
45:58
they're doing. And this is, this is extended to
46:01
extended to randomly kicking out journalists, taking and
46:05
torturing their own journalists, you know, taking foreign
46:08
opposition candidates. And that's just a system of, you
46:11
know, coercive and coercive force, which which exists in in
46:15
in that country these days. So yeah, I think it was a
46:19
bewildering, let's, let's put it that way.
46:21
Everybody says, was it scary? I was like, yeah, but it was
46:24
also very confusing. I spent a lot of time just
46:26
trying to figure out what was going on.
46:29
Well, any country with the word democratic in its title tends to
46:32
be, well, the precise opposite. I'm thinking of the Democratic
46:36
People's Republic of Korea, or whatever it's called.
46:40
It's generally means that it's it's an autocracy and I don't
46:42
quite know how democratic the DLC is.
46:45
They have elections, but they are not necessarily entirely
46:49
free and fair. One of the IT would be difficult
46:52
not to talk about the role of China in this, in all of this as
46:55
well, of course, because China is is heavily invested right
46:59
across Africa in, in mineral extraction and these supply
47:03
chains. And I'm sure there's issues
47:05
there you can talk about and those of us who are on the, you
47:10
know, climate beat are always now celebrating China because
47:13
China's going health and leather for clean energy, huge amounts
47:18
of solar wind batteries are a big part of the equation as
47:22
well. Of course, with the big success
47:24
of BYD and other Chinese car manufacturing, EV manufacturing
47:28
companies essentially making beginning to make the internal
47:32
combustion engine less and less relevant.
47:35
I think the the figures that I've seen for China were like
47:38
it's 50% of new cars in China now are electric and that's
47:44
thanks to some of these minerals that are originated from Congo.
47:47
So what are things like where the Chinese are operating?
47:51
So the Chinese in DRC operate at a small scale.
47:55
This is what the the Congolese called the little Chinese.
47:58
So that these are the people buying from artisanal mining or,
48:02
you know, they, you know, being kind of middle men and selling
48:05
these minerals to, to, to, to thumbs like Congo Dongfang
48:10
mining. These larger firms will buy the
48:13
minerals and then and then export them out of the country
48:16
and refine them in China. And then you have the large
48:22
Chinese companies. These are companies like China
48:25
Molly or CMAC group, and they own these huge mines.
48:29
And there's also this huge sort of quasi state owned mine called
48:33
Sicomine, which is in which is in, in Colwassia as well.
48:38
And these are these giant copper and cobalt mines in which the
48:41
Chinese state is, is very implicated through these big
48:44
Chinese companies or directly implicated itself.
48:47
Again, the standards on those mines are, are largely in line,
48:52
say largely, but they're more more in line with international
48:56
mining standards than than than other mines.
48:59
They still have big problems. I mean, for example, I was
49:01
trying to visit the Tenki Fungarume mine, which is one of
49:04
the biggest or if not the biggest cobalt mine in the
49:07
world. And the that title sort of slips
49:10
between two different mines depending on production and then
49:12
any given year. But I tried to go with her once
49:17
and and I was, I was, I was stopped from going there because
49:21
I was told that the people are are rioting on the mine site.
49:25
And it turned out that they were having a huge problem with
49:28
artisanal miners. And they actually called in the
49:30
army who came in. And the Congolese army is not
49:34
known for their, their tact or delicacy.
49:37
And then they and they were, they, you know, they were
49:39
destroying villages and shooting at people and so on.
49:42
So these mines also have problems with the local
49:45
population. There's a whole book to be
49:48
written on displacement from mining sites.
49:50
It's not a book I will write because I'm not allowed to go
49:52
back after my arrest, but encourage somebody to do so.
49:57
I mean, there are just horrible stories of displacement and
50:00
people told to pack their bags and 24 hours and leave their
50:03
village that their family has been living in for generations.
50:07
So it's certainly a problem on these big industrial mines as
50:12
they expand. China in Congo is very different
50:16
from the US. However, I would say that they
50:18
are, they are fairly apolitical. They deal with anyone.
50:23
They don't lecture anyone. They don't want governments to
50:28
have any specific agenda. They just want the resources and
50:32
they just want to extract. And in some ways they're
50:35
reminiscent of colonialists and in some ways they are not
50:42
entirely reminiscent because they are just trying to do
50:45
business with whoever they can, whoever they can find.
50:48
That business, of course, is smooth, along with the exchange
50:51
of suitcases full of cash. But it is true that for many
50:55
years the West had retreated from countries like the DRC and
51:00
and also countries like Indonesia, which I go into in
51:03
the in in the book. And the Chinese filled that gap.
51:07
So the Chinese saw the way that the wind was blowing and they
51:10
got very well positioned over the last 30 years.
51:13
Well, we don't have time to go into all the different places
51:16
where my mining goes on, but let's look a bit of the future.
51:22
There's different battery chemistries being invented and
51:26
scaled all the time. Sodium batteries are now
51:30
becoming potentially a big thing which have less of the rare
51:34
mineral content, right? You know, sodium is replaces the
51:38
lithium presumably. And sodium, you know, is their
51:41
own table salt. It's pretty it's pretty common
51:43
stuff. I don't know whether they're
51:44
still, I don't imagine they have cobalt in either.
51:46
So is what what's, what's, what's going on currently in the
51:50
sort of the world battery scene? So sodium ion batteries are
51:53
obviously a big contender for for, you know, next battery
51:57
technology type thing. Actually, I mean, they're
52:00
already here, they're useful for some things.
52:02
They they can never get to the energy dense density of a
52:06
lithium ion battery. So it's questionable whether
52:09
they can be in your phone or in your computer or in your
52:13
high-powered electric car there. I think there's some run around
52:16
cars, but being built in China at the moment that are sodium
52:19
ion battery powered. There are lots of other
52:22
different types of cathode chemistries.
52:24
For example, the lithium ion phosphate technology that I
52:26
talked about a little bit earlier which relies on on on
52:30
phosphates which are also mined in complicated places like the
52:34
Western Sahara. Those technologies don't have
52:37
cobalt in them. So there is a move towards no
52:40
cobalt or low cobalt technologies.
52:43
Again, those batteries, it's hard to imagine them being in
52:46
devices. They still have to be a little
52:49
bit bigger than than what you might want in your cell phone or
52:51
in your computer or whatever it is.
52:53
And then you have a couple of other technologies that have
52:57
have less cobalt, some some of the solid-state batteries and so
53:00
on. So yes, the the field is rife
53:03
with innovation. The interesting thing is a lot
53:06
of that innovation is coming from China now finally, because
53:10
they have invested so much in research and development over
53:13
the last 20 years basically. Will this continue to be an
53:17
issue? Will mining in the DRC continue
53:19
to be an issue? I would argue yes, because it
53:22
is. It is one of the largest copper
53:24
producing companies in the countries in the world.
53:26
And copper is essential to electrification.
53:30
I can't remember the number exactly, but it's it's at least
53:33
two times more copper in an electric vehicle than an ICE,
53:37
than an internal combustion car. I think that we're in a
53:40
situation in which China has the lead, has the dominance and it
53:46
will be really, really interesting to see how this
53:49
plays out over the next couple of years.
53:52
But again, there's no need to go to sodium.
53:56
There's no need to try and figure out new technologies to
53:59
power our iPhones and our, you know, and our Samsung Galaxies
54:03
and our Apple Macs and our Teslas and whatever it is,
54:06
because we have the technology is there.
54:08
The technology is the lithium ion battery, which is this
54:11
remarkable thing. If we could only support sort
54:14
out the supply chain, if we could only figure out ways of
54:18
investing in countries and investing in companies that do
54:24
not use indentured labor, then we would have a clean battery
54:28
supply chain and we wouldn't have this issue.
54:30
I think that that's basically, I mean, the bad idea is the supply
54:34
chain, but not a single person, somebody didn't come up with it
54:38
in themselves. It happened through colonialism
54:41
and through, through bad decisions and through war and
54:45
through, through bad circumstance as well.
54:49
I mean, I don't think anybody in their right mind would design A
54:51
supply chain like this because it is polluting, it is risky, it
54:56
is complex. And I think it's high time that
55:00
we that we go and try and figure out how to make it better.
55:04
Well, I think that's a great ending point.
55:06
Thanks. Thanks so much, Nick.
55:07
And the bad idea is supply chain, not the use of cobalt in
55:10
batteries, because as you say, if you simply exit all mining in
55:14
DRC, then, well, most of the population and certainly in the
55:18
east and the South will will be out of work and people will will
55:21
potentially literally starve to death in large numbers until
55:25
there are alternative opportunities found for people
55:27
to make their livelihoods. So you're not calling down.
55:29
I think it's, it's important that you're not calling for an
55:32
end to mining or an end to the use of batteries or anything as
55:36
simplistic as that. You're actually arguing that
55:38
there should be more focus on the supply chain and, you know,
55:42
a better deal for, for, for the people who actually do the hard
55:45
work of digging this stuff up out of the ground.
55:47
So thanks again for highlighting this with, with, with your
55:51
amazing book. And I would encourage everyone
55:54
who uses batteries, which is absolutely everyone who's
55:56
listening to this and, or watching it to, to, to get a
55:59
hold of a copy and to understand more and to see if you can, if
56:02
you can find ways to help. So, Nick, thanks very much for
56:05
joining us, and thank you for helping to save the world from
56:08
bad ideas. Thank you very much for having
56:10
me, this has been really really fun.
56:15
Thanks so much for listening to Saving the World from Bad Ideas,
56:18
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