By Robert Bradley Jr.
“There are currently no large-scale, proven ways to make the foundations of modern civilisation without coal, oil and gas…. all we achieve [from climate mitigation policies] is exporting the pollution, hollowing out our own industrial base, and destroying our sovereignty, security and prosperity as a nation.” – Ken Brook (below)
LinkedIn is a major debate ground for all things climate and energy. The narrative of alarmists and forced energy transformationists (there is an industry of them, most from Europe) cannot get away with much. I actively participate on LinkedIn with more than 16,000 followers.
Many energy realists post useful information that advances the debate. Ken Brook from Australia was asked SO HOW GREEN ARE RENEWABLES – err solar and wind factories?“. He listed the upstream problems of wind, solar, and batteries in a comment:
“The critical minerals behind ‘clean’ technology come with realities we rarely acknowledge; wind turbines and EV motors depend on high-coercivity NdFeB magnets made from neodymium and praseodymium, stabilised with dysprosium and terbium sourced mainly from the toxic hell-hole rare-earth refineries of Inner Mongolia and illegal operations in Myanmar;
- Lithium extraction in Chile, Argentina and Bolivia drains fragile salt-flat aquifers and deprives native peoples of water rights in one of the most arid regions on Earth;
- Copper and silver for solar farms and transmission lines are mined at huge environmental cost in Chile, Peru and Ecuador;
- Indonesian nickel for “green” batteries is refined in coal-fired smelters that destroy rainforests and coral reefs; battery-grade graphite is overwhelmingly processed in China and Madagascar using hydrofluoric acid (HF) purification that leaves behind toxic residues;
- Polysilicon for solar panels comes largely from Xinjiang where coercive Uyghur labour programs and HF-intensive processing raise serious ethical and environmental concerns;
- Cobalt still depends heavily on artisanal and child labour in dangerous hand-dug pits in Congo; and tin for EV and electronics solder is dominated by Myanmar and Indonesia;
because Australia refuses to develop serious onshore refining or magnet manufacturing, we export the toxic chemistry, the water theft, the labour abuses and the ecological destruction to poorer nations while congratulating ourselves for being “green” — a level of moral hypocrisy we should no longer tolerate.
Brooks then lists the fossil-fuel imperatives:
There are currently no large-scale, proven ways to make the foundations of modern civilisation without coal, oil and gas; we still rely on them for steel and aluminium smelting; cement and clinker production; plastics, solvents and chemical feedstocks; nitrogen fertilisers and ammonia; pharmaceuticals and synthetic precursors; rubber, glass and asphalt; high-temperature industrial heat for kilns, refineries and smelters; and the diesel, shipping fuel and jet fuel that actually move ores, food and freight; forcing a rapid fossil phase-out before we have engineered substitutes doesn’t eliminate these processes, it simply offshores them to countries with weaker labour, environmental and emissions standards
He ends:
Unless we think this through properly, all we achieve is exporting the pollution, hollowing out our own industrial base, and destroying our sovereignty, security and prosperity as a nation.
Brooks’s message for Australia is for the world.
