WeekendAnalysis
Wif the promise of clean energy was an illusion? What if green technologies’ remedies are actually worse than the evils of fossil fuels? These are the questions which the explosive Al Jazeera documentary ‘The Dark Side of Green Energy’ appears to provide answers to. This documentary has been a revelation.
Countries of the world, including the Kingdom of Eswatini, have been directed to fight pollution and rising temperatures, so as to reduce the impact of climate change. In 2015, 195 countries committed to reducing carbon emissions and, at the end of COP21 Conference, new energy transition initiatives were officially launched.
The end of petroleum dominance came to an end. Green technologies, such as wind turbines and solar panels, soon found their new place. Electric cars, wind and solar energies were spoken of as though they were going to solve the climate change problem. But, as revealed in the documentary, as the new energy transition takes the globe away from fossil resources, it is already generating new environmental disasters. Completely green energy has been found to be non-existent because whenever humans act and produce things, they create pollution.
The ecological transition has been exposed as, above all, an economic transition. To be convinced of this, the documentary first refers to the issue of electric cars, which has given car makers the opportunity to re-invent themselves. While the electric car manufacturers present the advantages of these vehicles, they also perfectly know that these automobiles are not as clean as they are presented.
HAT ABANDONED
While the oil has been abandoned, raw materials, however, which have become essential, have replaced it. These raw materials are rare metals. After the oil dependence, there is now a new dependence in the form of rare metals. But where do these absolutely essential resources come from? Why are manufacturers not communicating on their importance? The main reason for this, it is said, is perhaps that these rare metals are extracted far from the cities and far from sight. Thousands of mines on the world’s four continents are said to be already producing hundreds of millions of tons of these resources.
China is reportedly the world’s leading producer of raw metals and extracts 70 per cent of the world’s graphite, which is particularly prized by green technologies manufacturers. To ensure the green future, graphite is refined in antiquated factories. Humans run great risks and nature is destroyed. Graphite residues are scattered across the countryside. The human lives count very little compared to the billions of dollars that graphite produces for China’s
Government. The Chinese are reportedly paying particularly a heavy environmental and human price to allow the world to transition to green energy.
“What a number of companies want above all, is to lower their productive costs. Instead of sanitising their waste water, gases and other waste before discharging them into the environment, they dump them secretly, without treating them. Or they process them only when the government supervises request it.
They don’t hesitate to lie. They dump their waste when the authorities turn their backs. There is no question that irresponsible businesses like this exist,” said Shen Zhanheng, the Deputy Secretary General of the Association of China Rare Earth Industry.
In Inner Mongolia, the Chinese are said to have built spectacular industrial centres that are dedicated to the refining of rare minerals, a specific family of rare metals. The main pollution discharged from these factories aren’t treated as waste water. At the gates of the Mongolian City, a huge lake has reportedly been born, which is fed by tonnes of black water, saturated with acids and heavy metals.
“Waste water from the production of rare minerals infiltrates the soil. When people get their drinking water from the water table, it damages their health. For example, water with a high fluorite content causes brittle disease. Bones fracture easily. In some places, there are thorium residues. It’s a radioactive element which infiltrates the soil with waste water and diffuses slowly. Thorium also proliferates in the air. It’s transported by dust when it’s very dry. This can cause radioactive contamination,” added Zhanheng.
These sources of pollution are the price to be paid so that wind turbines, solar panels and electric cars can purify the air in Europe.
Whole regions at the other end of the world are destroyed.
And the higher paradox is that this toxic discharges and polluting emissions continue to worsen the planet’s atmospheric pollution, as said in the documentary. Phillipe Bihoux, an Engineer and Member of the Momentum Institute, makes this highlight: “To be clean, we make dirty residue.
There is no zero impact product, zero CO2, 100 per cent green, as we sometimes read on labels. Everything has an impact.”
The green technologies are said to contain not only rare minerals, they are also made up of kinds of metals, even the most abundant. To build a wind turbine, it is said that an average of 20 tonnes of aluminium and up to 500 tonnes of steel is needed. An electric vehicle, on the other hand, can reportedly contain up to 175 pounds of copper, which is four times more than some gasoline powered cars. With the need for abundant metals such as copper, many other countries are now said to be impacted by the production of green energies.
DISCREET
This is a subject that promoters of green energies are accused of remaining very discreet about. In Northern Chile, there is the world’s largest open pit copper mine. To extract and refine the copper, the mine uses almost 2 000 litres of water per second.
This is despite that, in some areas of this desert, which is one of the arid zones in the world, it has not rained in 500 years.
The mine, therefore, consumes water that is meant for humans and this is causing scarcity of this resource. The copper mining is now reportedly resulting in people getting sick and dying from cardiovascular disease.
Cancers, particularly lung cancer, are said to be the main cause of death, and the link with contamination is indisputable. In some districts, more than 10 per cent of the population reportedly suffers from cancer because of the copper industry. As explained in the documentary, such places are known as sacrifice areas; they sacrifice their territory, their geography and the health of the people. And all these sacrifices are created for the benefit of others in other zones. Those privileged benefitting zones can afford the luxury of promoting clean energy, healthy energy, renewable energy and green energy, but someone has to pay the price.
In Norway, the citizens are said to be proud to be among the most environmentally friendly populations on earth. The country is said to be dominated by green energies; renewable is visible everywhere. But, the Norwegian authorities have been called out for their attitude of ignoring the cost that some countries have to pay for Norway to breathe clean air.
“There is some degree of hypocrisy involved here. Politicians are aware of the situation of where minerals and materials are sourced from, but they consider them maybe less important than electrifying the Norwegian society and having electric power on our streets,” said Henrik Shiellerup, the Director of Mineral Resources and the Geological Survey of Norway.
TRANSITION
Norwegian authorities’ behaviour is said to be such that the calculation of carbon emissions seems to stop at the country ‘s borders. Profits for the energy transition are said to be sweeping aside the questions raised by green technologies. Western leaders are accused of dreaming of taking advantage of the economic windfall represented by green technologies.
These words by Randy Hayes, the Co-Founder of Rainforest Action Network, mirror what we are not told about the impact of green, renewable energy: “The world of business and commerce is driving the energy transition and so it is not like there are benevolent people out there trying to solve the problems in the best possible ways. The wind companies and solar companies, they are trying to make a profit; they are trying to have a profitable business and that is not going to save the planet or save our human race.
Right now, industrial society talks about growth, and elected officials and politicians all want to have global growth; growth in the economy; growth in investments; everybody wants growth. But the truth is; we need to orchestrate a major u-turn in a fundamentally different direction.
We need to live in a different kind of way. We need to start reducing the amount of damage we do to the earth. We need to radically reduce the energy and material consumption in our lives. That is not a message you can easily sell to the world of business, to the captains of industry. That’s not a message you can sell to politicians who want to be re-elected.”
This maybe happening in countries that appear to be far from Eswatini, but the impact will be felt here and I believe it has begun to be felt, the problem is that we hardly realise. Just watch this documentary to get a clearer understanding of what is actually happening.