Need for NetZero & Green Energy driving Child Labour and Slavery

Written by Leticia Moshwe. 15/03/2023

Whilst the Elites’ growing desire for a net zero carbon footprint and green energy economy is becoming increasingly popular, no one is talking about the shocking secret that it’s built on: slavery and child labour.

Countries where these precious earth elements and minerals required for the modern day electronic devices and green energy technologies are produced and refined fall short of enforced environmental standards.

This multi-billion dollar industry is a dirty business. The mining, refining, manufacturing and transportation of large amounts of rare earth elements and critical minerals are a core part of the wind turbines, stations and cables used to transform the electricity produced by turbines and solar panels and the battery back-up needed to maintain power supply.

Most of these minerals and elements are mined in developing countries, and almost all the refining of them is done by China alone.

It has been reported by the International Agency that more scarce minerals precious earth elements and critical metals are required per kilowatt hour of energy produced than any other source of electric power generation, including both renewable and non-renewable energy.

The requirement for just one on-shore wind turbine is a whopping three metric tons of copper and magnets and much larger offshore wind turbines require considerably more.

The production of the lithium, cobalt, copper, nickel and other trace elements and metals required for the battery pack of one electric vehicle takes anything between 200,000 – 1.5million pounds of mined earth along with thousands of pounds of ore.

This therefore means that producing batteries for back-up power when wind and solar facilities on a large scale would require billions of tons of earth to be mined and refined. 

Cobalt is a key component for green energy technologies that the elite governments are pushing on an accelerated timeframe. The largest producer of cobalt is the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) where the conditions many of these minerals are produced are appalling and child labour has become the norm. Furthermore, as the largest refiner of most precious metals, mineral and rare earths around the world, China, produces these under forced or slave labour of persecuted religious minorities such as the Falun Gong followers and Uighurs.

Essentially, those government officials and international organisations pushing for Net Zero goals know child and slave labour are used to produce the minerals their green technologies depend on. Since they profit from government support in through mandates, we can say they care more about their pockets than they do the planet.

The increased government demand for wind turbines, solar panels, and battery packs in the Wes intensifies the strain on cobalt mines to produce more. Consequently pushing to more child labour, or existing child laborers being forced to work longer and harder under extremely dangerous conditions.

Whilst the US and the DRC have a memorandum of understanding to lower the practice of child labour, that agreement is not legally enforced.

In regards to China, some governments like the USA’s Biden administration has recognised the issue with slave labour and have put in the Uighur Forced Labour Prevention Act in 2021 yet the insufficient intelligence on tracking the these forced-labour in manufacturing, mining and refining makes it certain that the large green energy transition being pushed by the West will be built with minerals and parts produced using slave labour.

In conclusion, what the West is pushing as a positive for the planet is imposing severe externalities in the developing countries. Morally, the obsession with green energy and net zero carbon footprint is pushing and maintaining poverty and premature death in developing countries whilst it further enriches those in developed countries.