Every enterprise has dark sides. They need to do whatever to keep the price low. They are sourcing material from cheap provider, it's not much of their concern how the product is obtained. It's largely the responsibility of the Congo's government to stop child labor and make provision for these kid to obtain proper education in schools. And we should rather pressure/help congo's government to make the change. Pressuring Telsa to stop getting Cobalt from DRC would have even more drastic consequences for those kids.
While I typically do follow this line of thinking. They don't HAVE to do this, no one is forcing them to do such. It's just the fact that in order to keep shareholders and buyers of the car happy, they're going to need to save money on certain things -- and buying cobalt from a place which treats their workers horribly is something they're going to do.
Profits are what business is all about.
Since something like 2/3 of Cobalt produced comes from DR Congo, I wouldn't single out Tesla here, as many others are using Cobalt from the same source ( for example cobalt for batteries in our mobile phone most likely comes from Congo) and with many other companies announcing electric cars, demand will significantly rise in years to come.
In a country that has one of the lowest GDP per capita in the world, world's 2nd rate of infant mortality, use of child soldiers in conflicts, decades of dictatorship and overall instability, child labor is something that is unfortunately very hard to eradicate. I just hope that DR Congo government will eventually start doing something in that regard
I feel sorry for DR Congo, that area has been heavily exploited in past as well, and unfortunately history tends to repeat itself. Belgium King Leopold II owned that whole country, and used it as private property from 1885 to 1908, and during that period millions lost their lives during brutal exploitation. Here is the
link if someone wants to read more about that somewhat forgotten part of the history.
I think this line of thinking is the better one, if this is the only place you're going to be able to buy this then this is what's going to happen.
