GOVERNOR INSLEE RESPONDS

Do Black Lives Matter When It Comes To Green Cars?

By Jim Scarantino

Electric cars run on the suffering of Black children living like slaves.  Dangerous, toxic mining conditions in the Congo cause death, disease and birth defects at alarming rates.  The cobalt from Congolese mines is necessary to meet the demand for the large quantities of cobalt needed in batteries powering the "green" transportation revolution.

There's no getting around the racial injustice behind every green car:  Affluent Western whites drive around in vehicles paid for by Black African suffering on a horrifying scale.

Monica, age 4, works in cobalt mines

We reported this in our first installment on this topic.  You can read it all by clicking here. 


We learned that electric car users and their advocates want to avoid discussing this painful topic.  Not one person we contacted for comment--from Jefferson County EV owners and the Jefferson County Electric Vehicle Association to the City of Seattle's Green Fleet program to the group pushing this year's carbon tax, I-1631--responded to our simple question:  How do you handle buying, driving and advocating for the increased use of electric cars when you know the racial suffering that goes into every vehicle?

After our story ran, we received a response from the administration of Governor Jay Inslee.  We had been in contact with them before the story ran and stated we had yet to receive a response.  Now we have.

Washington's Green Fleet Initiative

In our first report we wrote:

"While attending a climate change summit in Paris in 2015, Governor Jay Inslee unveiled an electric fleet initiative to ensure that at least 20% of all state vehicle purchases are electric by 2017.  So we reached out to the State of Washington with our questions about the morality of buying electric cars that rely on child and slave labor.  

Off the record we learned the state is buying mostly Chey Bolts.  The batteries are made in Michigan.  So far, so good.  But our research showed that the batteries in Chey Bolts come from LG Chem of South Korea, which buys its cobalt from the same Chinese outfit implicated in all the reports starting with Amnesty.  In the Amnesty investigation LG Chem admitted using cobalt from the mines where the horrible conditions were found.  The Washington Post asked LG Chem where they got their cobalt.  They claimed their cobalt comes not from the Congo, but from New Caledonia.  However, minerals experts consulted by The Post concluded that could not be true, as LG Chem uses more cobalt than New Caledonia's entire national production."

Here's the statement we received from Jennifer Reynolds, Communications Consultant in the Governor's Department of Enterprise Services:

Thank you for your inquiry regarding the state’s purchase of electric vehicles that may contain cobalt mined in the Congo.  While the state does not have purchasing screens in place, we are engaged in efforts to find sustainable materials to fuel electric vehicles. For example, this year, Governor Jay Inslee led efforts to fully fund the Joint Center for Deployment and Research in Earth Abundant Materials (JCDREAM), a collaborative effort between the University of Washington and Washington State University to stimulate education, research and innovation in new battery technology that uses materials that are more environmentally and economically sustainable. The Governor has also engaged with the World Economic Forum’s Global Battery Alliance, an industry-led coalition to support development of an inclusive, sustainable and innovative battery value chain. In addition to advancing a sustainable supply of raw battery materials and unlocking innovation along the value chain, this effort seeks to create a circular economy for batteries that reuses and recycles materials and avoids more mining.

So what does it mean?

1.  The State of Washington is not screening its electric vehicle purchases to exclude vehicles containing cobalt that cannot be certified as not coming from mines using child or slave labor.

2.  Governor Inslee, a strong advocate of increasing dependence on electric vehicles, knows there is a problem.

This is consistent with all the electric vehicle manufacturers contacted by media organizations and Amnesty International, as detailed in our first report.  They know they can't certify their products as ethical, they know the cobalt they are using almost certainly is produced by African suffering and injustice, and they are taking steps to do something about it.

But as CNN and CBS revealed, most of what they're doing is just talking.  Nobody yet has an alternative to the 60% of the world's reserves of cobalt found in the Congo.  If serious, uncompromising steps were taken to stop the flow of "blood cobalt" into their supply lines, companies would have to cease production of many products.

The Scales of Justice

Let us hope the State of Washington, as it increases its purchases of electric vehicles, uses its power, its status and its influence to correct this horrible injustice.

Let us hope there is a miraculous scientific breakthrough that discovers or creates a material to match cobalt's unique properties that make it absolutely essential to electric car batteries.

Electric vehicles run on the suffering of Black African children.  That is the reality for the foreseeable future.  This is the dirty little secret of green cars.

But it is not little.  UNICEF says at least 40,000 children, some as young as four years old, give their health, freedom and lives for cobalt for the Western world's high tech cars.

It is not secret.  We can no longer say we don't know.

Many people view purchasing an electric car as a moral decision.  Now that we know what goes into those cars, there is more than a belief in the theory of anthropogenic global warming tipping the scales.