00:00Today on Forbes, Elon Musk's laughable new solution to Tesla's child labor worries.
00:07Last year, just after Tesla's board and investors voted down a proposal to hire an outside monitor to ensure the electric vehicle makers'
00:15cobalt suppliers weren't using child or forced labor at mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo,
00:21Elon Musk pledged to do exactly that and more.
00:26Speaking to a raucous, adoring crowd of shareholders at Tesla's annual meeting in May 2023,
00:32Musk, now the world's wealthiest person, said,
00:36I heard a question raised about cobalt mining, and you know what? We will do a third-party audit.
00:41In fact, we'll put a webcam on the mine.
00:45He added while giggling,
00:47If anybody sees any children, please let us know.
00:50But Forbes has learned that a year later, Musk's promised webcam hasn't materialized as expected.
00:56Rather than a live camera feed, the Komodo Copper Company, that's Tesla's main cobalt source,
01:02instead posts a single photo of the sprawling mine complex in southern Congo every month,
01:07taken by an Airbus satellite orbiting far above the Earth.
01:11There are no children to be seen, but that's because the resolution isn't nearly sufficient to reveal anything smaller
01:17than processing facilities and the scarred landscape of a highly industrialized open-pit mine.
01:24Tesla also claims to have had multiple third-party reviews of working conditions at Komodo,
01:29which is owned by the global mining giant Glencore, according to its latest environmental impact report.
01:35The company said,
01:47It goes on,
01:56But, according to Courtney Wicks, the executive director of Investor Advocates for Social Justice,
02:02neither the monthly satellite image nor the third-party reviews address ongoing problems with cobalt and copper mining.
02:09She represented the group of Tesla shareholders last year
02:12who tried to get the company to adopt more rigorous guidelines for cobalt sourcing in 2023.
02:17Wicks told Forbes,
02:24She said that steps Tesla has taken,
02:32Michael Posner, a professor at New York University's Stern School of Business
02:37and director of NYU's Center for Business and Human Rights,
02:40said that's because the issue isn't mainly what's happening at the Komodo mine complex,
02:44but in neighboring unregulated mines.
02:47A new study he worked on with the Geneva Center for Business and Human Rights
02:51estimates that about 40,000 people under 18 work or are present at the Artisanal Small-Scale Mining,
02:58or ASM, operations in Congo.
03:01According to the study, children are often there,
03:10because families need additional income."
03:14Posner said,
03:26Cobalt from these smaller-scale mines is sold to traders
03:29and mixed in with metal coming from industrial mines like Komodo.
03:33But, Posner said,
03:34Tesla's not monitoring them at all,
03:39Posner said that a further complicating factor
03:42is cobalt from Congo is shipped to China for refining,
03:45making it even harder to ensure that it's not sourced from an artisanal mine.
03:50He said,
03:58Cobalt is a crucial component of the batteries Tesla builds for its electric vehicles.
04:03Found in combination with copper,
04:05the material acts as a stabilizing ingredient in the cathodes of lithium-ion batteries
04:10that improves energy density.
04:12Congo is the leading source, with about 70% of the world's cobalt.
04:17While cobalt currently goes for about $28,000 per metric ton,
04:21less than half the price it was two years ago,
04:24it's still lucrative to mine.
04:26Batteries using it go into everything from iPhones to laptops to electric cars.
04:32While Musk's company isn't the single biggest consumer of cobalt,
04:36its leading position in the EV space
04:38has made it a focus of child labor and human rights activists.
04:42For full coverage, check out Alan Onsman's piece on Forbes.com.
04:48This is Kieran Meadows from Forbes.
04:51Thanks for tuning in.
05:02Forbes.com
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