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The ruling class, powerful elite, and the media lack some energy literacy which may be the reasons they avoid conversations about the ugly side of “green” mandates and subsidies. Before anyone in Washington decides to procure wind turbines, solar panels, or an EV, they should read the Pulitzer Prize nominated book “Clean Energy Exploitations”, and decide for themselves if they wish to financially support the humanity atrocities and environmental degradation among folks in developing countries with yellow, brown, and black skin, so that the wealthy countries can go green.
The few wealthy countries pursuing the generation of electricity from wind turbines and solar panels while simultaneously moving to rid the world of fossil fuels have short memories of petrochemical products and human ingenuity being the reasons for the world populating from 1 to 8 billion in less than two hundred years.
Wealth, with no ethical or moral standards for those of lesser means, can be dangerous and fatal to the cheap labor of disposable workforces. We have seen the effects on the disposable workforce when Qatar “needed” to build seven new stadiums in a decade to be ready for the 2022 World Cup. The World Cup in Qatar kicked off on Sunday November 20 at the Al Bayt Stadium, but the “acceptable” toll of more than 6,500 migrant laborers who died between 2011 and 2020, helping to build World Cup infrastructure with cheap disposable workforce will provide viewers and participants with many lingering questions about our ethical and moral beliefs resulting from the grim toll.
The transition to electricity generation from breezes and sunshine has proven to be ultra-expensive for the wealthy countries of Germany, Australia, Great Britain, and the USA representing 6 percent of the world’s population (508 million vs 8 billion). Those wealthy countries now have among the highest cost for their electricity, while the poorer developing countries, currently without the usage of the 20th century products manufactured from crude oil, are experiencing about 11,000,000 child deaths every year due to the unavailability of the fossil fuel products used in wealthy countries.
When we look outside the few wealthy countries, we see that at least 80 percent of humanity, or more than six billion in this world are living on less than $10 a day, and billions living with little to no access to electricity, politicians are pursuing the most expensive ways to generate intermittent electricity. Energy poverty is among the most crippling but least talked-about crises of the 21st century. We should not take energy for granted. Wealthy countries may be able to bear expensive electricity and fuels, but not by those that can least afford living in “energy poverty.”
Decades ago, it was sweat shops in the textile industry that grabbed everyone’s humanity interests, but today it is the “green” movement that is dominated by poorer developing countries mining for the exotic minerals and metals that support the wealthy countries that are going green at any cost to humanity, remains out of the spotlight.
Today, the wealthy countries understand developing countries have virtually no environmental laws nor labor laws, which allows those locations unlimited opportunities to exploit folks with yellow, brown, and black skin, and inflict environmental degradation to their local landscapes.
Read the rest of this piece at CFACT.
Ron Stein is an engineer who, drawing upon 25 years of project management and business development experience, launched PTS Advance in 1995. He is an author, engineer, and energy expert who writes frequently on issues of energy and economics.
Photo: courtesy CFACT.