By Steve Milloy
Now that the Democrats have lost their lock grip on power, what’s a green activist to do? It’s almost comical how the climate left is trying to cloak their agenda in terms they think will melt in Republicans’ ears. For example, Jennifer Granholm, energy secretary in the Biden administration recently penned an opinion piece arguing that President Trump is playing right into Communist China’s evil hands by killing off America’s green economy.
Translation: The left is furious that Trump has halted the flow of billions of taxpayers’ dollars to subsidize electric vehicles that nobody wants and only the well-off can afford. The new president is killing the “green economy,” as Granholm puts it.
There is nothing green about the climate left’s solutions.
If the climate movement was truly sincere and intellectually honest in its desire to stop actions contributing to global environmental degradation, it would stand fast against solar panels and electric vehicles. There is nothing green about the climate left’s solutions.
There is nothing environmentally friendly about using enslaved children in the Congo to mine cobalt for lithium-ion rechargeable batteries used in EVs. They labor with crude tools and bare hands, breathing in cobalt’s toxic dust in cramped pits. Runoff infused with cobalt and other chemicals contaminate the water supply. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, green activists sit blithely unaware or unconcerned in the comfort of their own homes. They are saving the world, they smugly assure themselves, while children suffer in an environmental hellhole.
Far removed from U.S. environmental standards, Indonesia is the center of mining and refining nickel, an essential component in EV batteries. Pea soup-thick brown emissions shroud nickel smelting operations in the Indonesian island of Sulawesi as well as the coal-fired plants that fuel them. Processing waste and chemicals potentially leach into the ground. Dust residue from both ubiquitously blanket nearby communities, while waterways tainted by mining operations have red cast. Whatever else climate activists may try to tell us, there is nothing green going on here.
In Brazil, near the mouth of the Amazon River, a factory refines bauxite into what eventually becomes aluminum. It had been the source of aluminum in the Ford F-150 Lightening, the company’s now cancelled all-electric pickup truck. A lawsuit alleges that toxic elements, including aluminum and other heavy metals emanating from the refinery, have been responsible for cancer, birth defects, neurological dysfunction, digestive disorders, skin conditions, and increased mortality. How can an EV be called green or good for the environment when it’s making thousands of Brazilians sick?
Elsewhere in Brazil this past Christmas season, Brazilian authorities shuttered construction of an EV factory when it was discovered that its builders were working under “slavery”-like conditions. How is that a green virtue? Perhaps green dogma holds that human worth and dignity are small sacrifices that must be made for the common good.
Solar energy, long the prize pig of the climate crowd, isn’t green either. The fact that destroying forest land for solar arrays is bad for the environment should be obvious. Studies have found “the loss of carbon-dioxide gobbling forests for solar installations results in a net increase in greenhouse gas emissions.” Nor should wind farms be considered remotely green when wildlife is being killed and habitats are being disrupted. The same is true offshore, with a number of whale deaths associated with mammoth wind operations.
The same folks pushing “green” have been disingenuous from the start. In 1970, they assured us that human activity would cause an ice age by the 21st century and that we’d be under food rationing by 1980. Acid rain was a crisis until it wasn’t. Then global warming became the crisis, with much of New York City to be underwater by 2019. In 2008, Al Gore prophesized that the North polar cap would be gone in five years. It wasn’t. In 2009, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown proclaimed,” We have fewer than 50 days to save our planet from catastrophe. Spoiler alert: We’re still here and thriving.
Their seemingly endless lies have been accompanied by Orwellian word games, moving from “global warming” to “change.” Now the Newspeak has shifted to “extreme weather and “overheating.
The truth is there is no green energy. No energy is clean. No energy is dirty. There are only challenges, solutions and tradeoffs. At the time of already high energy costs, choosing reliable, fossil fuel-backed energy is of paramount importance. Word sophistry from our friends on the left won’t change that.
Steve Milloy is a Senior Fellow at the Energy & Environment Legal Institute and former member of the Trump EPA Transition Team.
This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.
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Since most of those Green Scheme Machines are manufactured and sold by China, ending their installation only hurts China (at least 80% of the hurt anyway)
“A lawsuit alleges that toxic elements, including aluminum and other heavy metals”
Aluminium is neither toxic nor a heavy metal.
Not technically a heavy metal but it is often listed as one on account of its similar toxic properties, which it is, actually.
What is aluminum poisoning? – Search
Nick doesn’t know what he’s talking about?
I am shocked.
The question is –
how does Aluminium measure up as a threat to existence of life on Earth against that most pernicious element of all –
CAAARBON?
I think the “most pernicious element” that presents a threat to life on Earth is idioticum.
Idioticum is pervasive in lecture halls around most campuses of higher learning and often used as a stabilizing agent in Democrat Idealism.
Idioticum has a partner element just 2 moles heavier called Moronicum. Moronicum is unfortunately dolled out like candy at most Liberal Parties and is the main element in the Democrat Party drug of choice
Something In The Air
?
Speaking of pernicious;
Administratium: this element is composed of 1 neutron, 12 assistant neutrons, 75 deputy neutrons, and 111 assistant deputy neutrons for an atomic mass of 312.
Each administratium atom is held together by sub-atomic particles called morons, which are, in turn, surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons. Since administratium has no electrons, it is inert; however it can be easily detected as it impedes every reaction it comes in contact with.
Administratium has a normal half-life of 3 years; it does not decay, but instead undergoes reorganization, in which a portion of the assistant neutrons, deputy neutrons, and assistant deputy neutrons exchange positions.
In fact, administratium’s mass will increase over time, since each reorganization causes some morons to become neutrons called isodopes. This characteristic of moron-promotion leads some scientists to speculate that administratium is formed whenever morons reach a certain quantity in concentration; referred to as the Critical Morass.
Oops. Looks like you beat me to it!
Gold! 🙂
Reminds me of another…
The Heaviest Element
A major research institution has recently announced the discovery of the heaviest chemical element yet known to science. The new element has been named
“Governmentium”. Governmentium has 1 neutron, 12 assistant neutrons, 75 deputy neutrons, and 11 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312.
These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons.
Since governmentium has no electrons, it is inert. However, it can be detected as it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact. A minute amount
of governmentium causes one reaction to take over 4 days to complete when it would normally take less than a second. Governmentium has a normal half-life
of 2 to 4years; it does not decay, but instead undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places.
In fact, governmentium’s mass will actually increase over time, since each reorganization causes some morons to become neutrons, forming isodopes,
This characteristic of moron-promotion leads some scientists to speculate that governmentium is formed whenever morons reach a certain quantity in
concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as “Critical Morass”. You will know it when you see it.
-Source Unknown
What an ill informed – and quite unbalanced – analysis. Aluminium is the third most abundant metal in the earth’s crust. As a consequence, very low-level exposure can always occur by eating or drinking food and water, breathing air, or from contact with soil. Low level exposure can also always occur from the use of consumer products that contain aluminium.
However, low level exposure from the correct use of products that contain aluminium such as cans, cookware, utensils and food wrappings do not cause adverse health effects.
Ingestion of very much more substantial amounts may indeed result in gastrointestinal (stomach) upsets, nausea or diarrhoea. But all of these are rare and more importantly, are self identifying and therefore normally under control.
What benefit is served by always identifying the very worst possible outcomes when the reality is almost always quite the opposite?
But, but, but … NLT.
Ask that of the Climate Disruption media?
Nick, depends. My mother died with (not of) severe MS. Several doctors told her and me that the origins could have been extra ‘unoxidized’—meaning some form of potentially still active chemically aluminum in drinking water. She lived where there were several chemical potential sources. Amount of ‘unoxidized’ aluminum should be zero.
We know that oxidized aluminum is obviously inert and of no consequence. Ditto pure aluminum waiting to be oxidized.
Aluminium is everywhere. Clay is an aluminium silicate. Aluminium salts are used as antacids. Deodorants are usually aluminium chloride or a variant.
Sigh that isn’t the issue it is how much and how it is entered into the body that matters, the DOSE factor.
Or, as in Nick’s case, the DOPE factor.
There are some concerns about neurological effects from long term low level exposure, but the concern of the article is gross contamination of drinking water etc. which can be very serious.
In the linked article there seems to be concern about a variety of aspects pf pollution, including from coal burning. But it seems determined to link it to EV’s, which are a very minor part of total Al usage. Total automotive is about 27%, and EVs are about 10% of automotive. EVs use 20-30% more Al than ICE vehicles, so that means maybe 5% of Al goes into EVs. Yet the article seems to pile all the responsibility onto them.
I don’t disagree toxic industrial pollution is bad regardless of end use, but creating more of a demand won’t help; regardless, that wasn’t your point I was responding to.
Yet I have personally read a water discharge permit for a plant in the US with limits on aluminum.
The poison, Nick, is in the dosage.
You don’t really still believe this man made carbon dioxide emissions cause global warming thing do you?
Carbon. /s
‘Normal’ exposure to aluminum is not considered toxic, but being near the daily production of aluminum would be a high exposure, and high exposures are toxic. Aluminum is not a heavy metal, but the sentence that you quoted is ambiguous. It could be falsely suggesting that aluminum is a heavy metal, but it is more likely listing toxic substances, including aluminum and other metals which are ‘HEAVY’.
Since you did not quibble over the main point of the article, can we assume that you agree that “There Is Nothing Green About the ‘Green’ Agenda'”?
The rest is similar. It tries to blame Greens for what are long standing industrial processes, producing products we all use in our lives. Cobalt mining in the Congo is a byproduct of copper mining. Cobalt is used in many things, not just EVs, and of course, copper even more. Nickel? Well, I’ll quote Wiki:
“Global use of nickel is currently 68% in stainless steel, 10% in nonferrous alloys, 9% electroplating, 7% alloy steel, 3% foundries, and 4% other (including batteries)”
Just imagine how much more the battery component would increase If/When sufficient multi-GWh battery storage is being manufactured and installed to make Solar/Wind intermittency less of an issue for an asinine impractical renewable grid. Or for Billions (currently 2.2B ICVs) of 100KWh battery packs for global personal transportation. Or for the hundreds of millions of 1.5MWh battery packs for Trucking and Bussing in a non FF world.
It might increase, but see the hypocrisy. Ni mining is said to do terrible things to the environment and it’s all the fault of batteries. Oh, we see, almost all of it is used for other things. Then those terrible things don’t matter.
That’s like blaming 600,000,000 cats for bird deaths and extolling 300,000 Wind turbines for their lack thereof. Cats only kill more birds because there are more cats. Wind Turbines kill 1.4 birds, .4 raptors and 2+ bats per turbine per year. Average…
420,000 birds
120,000 raptors
650,000 bats
Per year
Increase that to 30,000,000 turbines to replace FF and you will kill birds and bats by the billions yearly.
The death toll from wind turbines which you are quoting is propaganda from the wind lobby.
The wind turbine apologists have always grossly understated the avian death toll from wind turbines. My experience of the wind lobby in Scotland is that I have never met a bigger bunch of lying scumbags in my life.
This link shows bird mortality per turbine in various countries.
Spain: 333-1000 birds/bats per year
Germany: 309 birds per year.
Sweden: 895 birds per year.
https://windmillskill.com/blog/spanish-wind-farms-kill-6-18-million-birds-bats-year
The Spanish study says that bat deaths outnumber bird deaths by 2 to 1.
I see that the link that I provided no longer works. This is happening more and more often to websites which contradict the climate crisis narrative.
And that IS a problem. Especially when trying to argue a point with a pernicious green member dosed too often with moronicum
The difference is using it for very unnecessary and wasteful products as opposed to ones people actually want, and calling it “clean” when it certainly is not.
The quote is about what the law suit alleges. Whether or not it’s true will be decided in court. Whether or not it’s true is typically not an issue in such law suits. See, e.g. glyphosate (Round-up) also non-toxic but subject of massive judgements in court.
He takes it on board, saying of an alumina refinery:
“How can an EV be called green or good for the environment when it’s making thousands of Brazilians sick?”
Refining alumina has been going on on a massive scale long before EV’s. Al is everywhere in our lives. Greens didn’t invent it.
So is Carbon, Nick and yet the greens weaponised that as an existential threat to all life on Earth.
What’s up with that?
Carbon dioxide.
Greens didn’t invent it but can intermittent wind and solar produce sufficient long term power to complete the refining process?
So why add to it for foolish, falsely promoted boondoggles?
LOL, you apparently never heard of Dose effects of anything, drink too much water can stop the heart, drink too much alcohol can stop the heart and the liver or just overwhelm the body that cause it to collapse.
Aluminum dust is deadly to the lungs…., really you should be more careful in your statements.
There is no way an alumina refinery is going to endanger people with aluminium dust. Nor are people near a refinery going to get from that source anything like the dose of aluminium compounds that we encounter in our daily lives.
OMG!!! the IGNORANCE burns!!!
I have been in Hazardous safety classes which talks about environmental toxins and how to safely clean them up, here is a source talking about how dangerous just cleaning up the dust and powder really is.
LINK
You are displaying the ignorance. An alumina refinery does not produce aluminium metal, dust or not. It does no reduction. All it does is dissolve alumina in alkali solution to separate it from the other dirt.
And this chemical reaction is 100% safe, leaving no residues?
Yet the article stats the factory in question “refines bauxite into what eventually becomes aluminum.”
Al production goes like this. Bauxite is dug up – basically alumina plus dirt. A nearby alumina refinery removes the dirt, as here. The refined alumina is shipped to a smelter, in a place where power is cheap. Then it is reduced to Al metal.
Where is this … where power is cheap?
High power demand facilities are generally located where there is excess/plentiful elec being produced.
In your utopia, there is always just enough … not residual or excess.
(The relative cost difference that you misinterpret (misrepresent) as ‘cheap’ can’t exist in a green economy.)
Traditionally, somewhere with hydro – Canada, NZ, Tasmania, Norway etc
Aluminum toxicity is a condition that occurs when the body is exposed to high levels of aluminum. It can affect the bones, brain, heart, liver, muscle, and other organs.
Symptoms
Causes
In varying concentrations most everything is either beneficial or toxic
Warfarin is Rat Poison but used as an anticoagulant in small doses.
CO2 is beneficial up to 3000-4000 ppm for many plants while humans show little affect at those concentrations (regularly achieved in submarines). Above 40,000ppm (4%) CO2 becomes toxic, above 70,000ppm (7%) CO2 becomes lethal from short exposure.
Some basic science:
Aluminum is the third most common element on earth, and it combines very easily with other compounds. That is why it is not recommended to use as cookware; the aluminum can be dissolved too easily and seems to be both neuro- and cardio-toxic in high doses! You are welcome to continue using aluminum pots and pans if you wish; I’ll stick with my hard-anodized cookware that I’ve been using for decades without them losing their non-stick surface.
You should explain that to the people who filed the suit.
Get rid of the endangerment finding, which I think is bound to happen, and then what are they going to do. Without it, they have no foundation to base any of their climate crap on. And the POTUS needs to stop any US funding of the IPCC like he has several other UN initiatives.
The US does not fund the IPCC or UNFCCC. Using Google or Bing, you can obtain the budgets of these organizations and of the UN COP. The budgets have lists of the donner countries and amounts of the funds they donate which are many billions of dollars.
“donner countries”
Donner countries don’t donate. They eat themselves.
What? Oh… You meant DONOR countries.
I wonder why the spell checker did not put the wavy red underscore under
“donner”.
I just did a search on ”’donner” and found on Wikipedia the “Donner Party”.
They were a small group of pioneers that left Illinois in the mid 1840’s on trek to California.
“They eat themselves.”
Are you thinking of doner kebab, perhaps (single n)
Only “Donner” I am familiar with, is a brand of musical equipment
It’s a US thing.
https://www.history.com/topics/19th-century/donner-party
Donner, party of 12, your table is ready
Donner, party of 9, your table is ready
The US funds the UN more than any other. Does anyone really believe their accounting books or anything else they publish about themselves? Of course, we are funding the lot of it one way or another.
One example, we pay for most of NATO, so the others in the alliance can spend less on defense and have more for other boondoggles. There are a thousand spigots that flowed freely at least until now.
‘Word sophistry from our friends on the left won’t change that.’
There’s no evidence that we have any friends on the left, nor that our CO2 emissions have had, or will have, any effect on the Earth’s climate.
There is a measurable greening of the Earth.
I disagree with the last paragraph that ‘no energy is clean’. True for nuclear because of radwaste. Not true for CCGT, and for properly flue gas scrubbed coal, because CO2 is NOT a pollutant. There are no tradeoffs to be made for those. The premise of the EPA endangerment finding otherwise is simply false.
The production of wind turbines and especially solar panels is certainly not “clean”
Wind turbine need all sort of chemicals for the resins for the blades, and the extraction of neodymium for the magnets in the rotors is a particularly toxic process, with huge amounts of toxic waste sludge.
Solar panel manufacturing is also a highly toxic process, and because it costs around 3 times as much to recycle than to manufacture, they often end up in landfill, where thy continue to leach toxins.
Add in the huge environmental damage in installation and usage, and wind and solar are probably one of the most polluting and anti-environmental forms of energy there is.
China is building a wind turbine of unthinkable dimensions
The bigger they are, the harder they fall.
Like this turbine in Australia:
https://amp.abc.net.au/article/104903430
Yes, and being bigger doesn’t help them when the wind doesn’t blow.
No wind equals no electricity, no matter how big the windmill is.
or when the wind blows too much.
Make-em as big as you want but you still need the infrastructure capable of enabling site to site transportation and on site installation.
Larger trucks (that aren’t electric)
Straighter roads (you can only maneuver a 400′ turbine blade around a fairly large arc)
I seem to recall they built a big wall. That didn’t work out, either.
However, the Big Turbine will impress the the dullards who will clamor to try and match the deed, using stuff they buy from China. It may be a brilliant marketing ploy!
Windmills and solar require batteries which are currently mostly lithium and the mining and production and disposal of batteries is environmentally dirty. Elon Musk brags about Teslas being “green” but much of the electricity for Teslas comes from coal and NG. China even imports some coal to add to their huge domestic supply.
According to the IEA a third of all coal consumed worldwide is burned in power plants in China. Major drivers are electrification of services previously provided by other fuels such as mobility and industrial heat, and emerging services such as data centres and AI.
74% of China’s coal demand is for power plants and the Chinese electrical sector is the main driver of global coal demand.
IEA ‘Coal 2024 Analysis and Forecast to 2027’ (Dec. 2024)
Mark Marano just said on Fox News a few minutes ago that building a windmill requires 41 tons of plastic that cannot be recycled.
I’ve worked on coal fired power plants. They aren’t “clean”. You have forgotten about the ash. Two types of ash. The light stuff that would float out the stack if not scrubbed or captured, known as fly ash and bottom ash or clinkers, which is the heavy stuff that falls to the bottom of the boiler as clinkers and must be crushed and ground for transport.
No matter what one does with it, it’s dirty. It must be processed to remove certain contaminants even if it is going to be recycled to be used as aggregate in roads, sandblasting grit, grip strut media, black grit for 3 tab roofing shingles, or any of a number of other things it is recycled into.
Steve Milloy,
I do not think you gain much by using scare tactics that have long been used by green activists and shunned by responsible people in industry.
As a former miner involved with many different metals and including coal, I do not share your view of dirty mining. We miners are just ordinary family folk who dislike harm and pollution. These days, mining spends huge sums of money on rehabilitation, more than before when there was less profit to spend on rehab. Developing nations have more pressing humane uses for money than iver-regulated cleaning up orders.
There are many instances of filling open pits with waste rock rather than leaving the pit there to fill with water and become a lake. Nature makes lakes as well. Miners know which pits are best filled with rock afterwards.
The bleak picture of child miners that you paint is incomplete because it does not address what these poor kids could do without mining. One answer is “starve”.
Let’s try for a better balance next time? Geoff S
The Chinese have created a huge foul lake from mining lithium. In fact, China is pretty much an environmental disaster.
Shilling for the mining complex over child slavery? Sounds like a guilt
complex to me.
Reminds me of this story, where just because it’s a recycling facility, doesn’t mean it is clean:
https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/colorado/news/health-department-monitoring-colorado-renewable-energy-plant-for-excessive-fumes/
“arguing that President Trump is playing right into Communist China’s evil hands by killing off America’s green economy.”
It’s actually the exact opposite. China wants the west weak, and so-called green economies are weak.
Yes, it’s the Democrats who play right into the Chinese communists hands.
Democrats are unfit to defend the United States, for various reasons.
We watched the world go to hell under Joe Biden. That’s the kind of world we will get every time we elect a Democrat as president. They are just clueless when it comes to how to defend the United States, or how to handle the U.S. economy.
Democrats screw up national defense and the economy, and Republicans have to come in and fix all the problems the Democrats created. Here we go again.
Very nice Steve. The CAGW clowns know they have nothing to support their claims, not science not observations, nothing. All they have is lying, cheating and scaring the crap out of people. They are despicable.
Is it just me or does Chuck Schumer have a face just made for a snake oil salesman? Perhaps better than Mr. Haney’s on Green Acres.
Thanks for bringing a more intelligent perspective to these issues that are so often swept under the “green” rug by the activists.
The Green Agenda is all about greenbacks.