Climate Change Weekly #464: Slavery and Child Labor at the Core of Elites’ Green Energy Obsession
10 hours ago Guest Blogger 2 Comments
H. Sterling Burnett
Slavery and Child Labor at the Core of Elites’ Green Energy Obsession
The much touted green energy economy and the net zero goals it aims to obtain are built upon a dirty little secret: slavery, child labor, and environmental destruction. In this essay, I’ll only be discussing the first two.
I was a presenter at the 15th International Conference on Climate Change, on a panel titled “Green Energy And Exploitation.” My presentation pointed out that a large percentage of the rare earths and critical minerals required for modern electronics, in general, and green energy technologies, in particular, are produced and/or refined in countries where—if labor and environmental standards exist at all (and are enforced if they do)—the standards are far short of what is required in developed countries.
The mining, refining, manufacturing, and transportation of the huge amounts of rare earths and critical minerals is a dirty business. Yet, they are vital to the magnets used in wind turbines, the cables, and stations used to transform the electricity produced by turbines and solar panels, and transmit it to its final destination, and the battery back-up needed to maintain electric power supply and reliability from those intermittent sources.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/03/11/climate-change-weekly-464-slavery-and-child-labor-at-the-core-of-elites-green-energy-obsession/
