Thread by @shellenberger

People think solar panels protect the environment but they require 300+ times as much land as conventional energy sources and now the Los Angeles Times has discovered that they could "contaminate groundwater with toxic heavy metals such as lead, selenium and cadmium."

“Many are already winding up in landfills, where in some cases, they could potentially contaminate groundwater with toxic heavy metals such as lead, selenium and cadmium.”

“Sam Vanderhoof, a solar industry expert and chief executive of Recycle PV Solar, says that only 1 in 10 panels are actually recycled.

“The industry is supposed to be green,” Vanderhoof said. “But in reality, it’s all about the money.”

latimes.com/business/story…

I was one of the first reporters to write about solar waste. Representatives of the solar industry attacked me personally and tried to get my editors to censor me. Happily, they stood firm, and the article, from 2018, now looks prescient.

forbes.com/sites/michaels…

One year later, The New York Times confirmed my reporting & found solar panels & batteries used by Europeans were being dumped on poor nations.

The bottom line is that it's much cheaper to buy raw materials to make new solar panels than to recycle old ones.

Why did so many of us get renewables so wrong?

Karl Marx's concept of "commodity fetishism" explains why: we fell in love with the *image* (fetish) of the products and ignored the *reality* for workers and the environment.

Why did so many of us get renewables so wrong?

Karl Marx's concept of "commodity fetishism" explains why: we fell in love with the *image* (fetish) of the products and ignored the *reality* for workers and the environment.

This is more than a little ironic since most of us who fell in love with renewables came from the political Left and some of us, myself included, had read Marx, and had learned the concept of commodity fetishism in college.

I don't agree with Marx about most things, these days, but his idea of commodity fetishism is more true than ever.

We treat solar panels as magical and don't think about their coerced labor, toxic materials, or terrible land use impacts.

michaelshellenberger.substack.com/p/china-made-s…

The same is true for electric cars. Their impact on workers and the environment is atrocious.

Progressive and Left-wing people often look down on “dumb consumers,” but it was and is the professional managerial class of journalists, environmental activists, and renewable industry entrepreneurs who have most rationalized the use of coerced labor & environmental degradation.

Maybe solar *installation* jobs are good jobs? They aren’t. They are very low wage.

The Biden admin hyped a study finding that climate legislation would create 500k solar/wind jobs. But a look at the fine print showed they would be low-wage and come at the cost of higher wage (eg nuclear/nat gas) energy jobs.

nytimes.com/2021/07/16/bus… nytimes.com/2021/07/16/bus…

What, then, are solar panels/renewables/EVs *actually* for?

- Financing the persecution of Muslims in China

- Degrading nature

- Lowering worker wages & widening inequality

- Increasing toxic waste

- Providing educated professionals with the fantasy of saving the world

- Increasing the cost of energy

- Providing a mechanism for financing political parties and movements with taxpayer and consumer wealth

- Transfer wealth from poorer electricity consumers to wealthier consumers

Thread continues here!

https://twitter.com/ShellenbergerMD/status/1548914377268596736