Data on GDP was collected from the World Bank and cobalt extraction data from the USGS Minerals yearbook. Tools used: python, seaborn.

This chart comes from my personal blog: https://www.thedatachunk.com/p/quarry-quandary on the topic of the cobalt supply chain

All that child slavery and death for your 'green' ev battery.

This sub is just boring graphs now xd

Good point, because large petroleum exporting countries are super ethical

Dont know any oil companies that enslave children to use their tiny little hands. Blood diamonds where a thing. So is blood cobalt.

People in this sub are like correlation doesn’t mean causation

Nice work

Two wrongs don’t make right

You're right.

And I am certainly not endorsing the congo.

But the people who come out of the woodwork to make these arguments usually are not sincere.

Suddenly they care about unethical child labor in the Congo. Suddenly they care about birds getting killed by windmills. Suddenly they care about the environmental impact of mining lithium.

Bullshit.

They don't sincerely care about those things. Otherwise they would object to all the other unethical labor practices in the world. Otherwise they would seek to protect endangered species in oil rich habitats. Otherwise they would object to toxic mining practices used to extract coal and oil.

Lol, do you know how Saudi Arabia treats women, homosexuals, journalists, and apostates?

Any particular reason why the Y axis for Gross Domestic Product doesn't start at 0, apart from trying to artificially align two series?

45 billion…. I’m sure the government will be able to use that fund effectively to combat poverty and low rate of education…..

I remember when this was an anti Apple argument, because of laptop batteries. People are just now coming out of the woodwork to complain about things from the EV and green angle, but didn't see these people cry out for the birds when we talked about cat registration and castration where I live, only when it was a thing with windmills did bird lives suddenly matter. Same with EV, cobalt is used in oil and gas refineries, but there it isn't recyclable.

Yeah it used to be creative and unique ways of showing data.

Now it's just clickbait tables that could be made in excel with no link to the data or context

Well the town of Cobalt Ontario is opening a refinery in the next few years so hopefully that helps

A few ppl are getting very rich and the rest are in slavery till death.

Any big company that uses batteries lie to the public when they say their supply chains are clean.

[removed]

Do you have a better solution?

Clearly if we have to pick between petroleum and cobalt, cobalt is a better option, no?

Even with the weird axes issue (not going to zero for both) this looks like the DRC has undiversified their GDP at their peril (i.e., they have probably contracted Dutch Disease).

They're clearly correlated and not every graph needs to start at y=0.

now tie it to chocolate production.

You wouldn't unless Joe Rogan does an episode on it, right

And for basically all consumer electronics. I assume you plan on ditching all your phones, laptops, etc because you care so much about this?

Oh, I see,, how about, "Is this inflation?"

Just read up for example the operations of Shell in Nigeria. Blood oil definitely exists as well.

And I sleep a lot better knowing that the cobalt is going to kill a lot fewer people than the oil

Venn diagram of those who wave confederate flags and hate green energy would be pretty telling I imagine

Those that complain about green energy typically hate those groups too...

Good response. What About this and that? It justifies slavery to mine cobalt for your batteries. Bad things happen everywhere so slavery is just fine

Because it doesn't? One isn't caused by the other, both are a result of stability within the Congo government and the fact reddit's favorite African dictator Paul Kugame was told by the int. community he cannot occupy Eastern Congo for resource extraction and Hutu massacres.

the data proves you wrong:

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/COD/congo-dem-rep/literacy-rate#:~:text=Democratic%20Republic%20of%20Congo%20Literacy%20Rate%20-%20Historical,2001%20%20%2067.17%25%20%20%20-5.97%25%20

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/COD/congo-dem-rep/literacy-rate#:~:text=Democratic%20Republic%20of%20Congo%20Literacy%20Rate%20-%20Historical,2001%20%20%2067.17%25%20%20%20-5.97%25%20

Their literacy rates follow a few years after Cobalt production. So the less cobalt they mine, the less educated they get.

It's the same thing in every country: India, China, etc. The more money they make, the more education and higher quality of life they have, and the faster they can stop doing whatever you don't want them to do and move on to doing stuff like innovating.

Somehow I think people like you don't want Africans to get educated at all so you'll still hate it.