John Lee Pettimore Profile picture
Mining mechanic. UG OP 3X Red Seal. Mine Rescue. CAF Vet. From the Tien Shan mountains of Kyrgyzstan to the bitter cold of the Yukon. Mining 40 yrs. retired.

Feb 14, 2023, 9 tweets

Something the #GreenEnergy advocates never want to talk about is the environmental damage so called "renewables" do to the planet. I mean who cares about a vast man-made lake of poison in northern China, as long as it's not in my backyard. Right? 🧵

Much of China’s green energy boom was supported by a phenomenal growth in coal consumption which rose from 300 million tons annually in 1970 to 4.3 billion tons last year.

As a consequence, the air is unbreathable in many cities, and soil contamination has left 20% of China’s arable land too polluted to grow crops safely. The air is so polluted the chimneys from a smelting plant are barely visible.

Other nations are wreaking environmental damage on themselves as well for the Almighty Dollar, but China is the “winner”. No other nation can compete. China controls about 63% of rare earth metals, and 90% of the supply chain.

Baotou is the world’s biggest supplier of rare earth minerals — the fundamental ingredients used to make today’s technologies The refinery on the other side of the lake is the largest rare earth plant on the planet and all the waste material from this process is dumped here.

This toxic waste in this lake was found to have radiation levels ten times higher than in the surrounding countryside and was made up of a cocktail of acids, heavy metals, carcinogens and radioactive material used to process the 17 most sought after minerals in the world.

People too began to suffer, their teeth fall out, their hair turned white at unusually young ages, and they suffer from severe skin and respiratory diseases. Children were born with soft bones and cancer rates rocketed.

Official studies carried out in Dalahai village confirmed there were unusually high rates of cancer along with high rates of osteoporosis and skin and respiratory diseases.

But who really cares about all this, as long as we have our shiny white wind turbines, solar panels and EVs to show the world we really care, right?

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