Who defines “sustainable?”

Decades ago, the late ecological economist Herman Daly named two rules for creating sustainability: Don’t take from the Earth faster than it can replenish; and don’t waste faster than it can absorb.

            As we aim for sustainability today, could we include these rules?

WHO DECIDES WHAT’S SUSTAINABLE—AND BY WHAT CRITERIA?

Who should have authority to approve or deny proposals to build new wind, solar and battery facilities? State regulators? Local governments? Some combination of the two? What criteria should anyone use to approve or deny a pemit to build a facility?

Massachusetts, Michigan and other states have passed or nearly passed legislation that strips local control over the siting and permitting of industrial solar PVs, wind turbines, large-scale battery storage and utility transmission and distribution infrastructure. The Supreme Court’s 2024 Chevron decision cements the idea that government agencies have no authority to monitor or enforce damages to ecosystems or public health caused by manufacturing, operating or discarding electrical power, telecom infrastructure or digital devices. The public therefore must research consequences of manufacturing and digitalization, live with these consequences, clarify what choices are within its control.

Meanwhile, massive, often unrecognized problems abound:

SOLAR PVs

According to a report by Sheffield Hallam University, “almost the entire global solar panel industry is implicated in the forced labor of Uyghurs and other Turkic and Muslim-majority peoples” who crush quartz rocks and work in coal-fueled furnaces to produce polysilicon for solar panels. Investors nor governments adequately address Uyghur forced labour risks in the renewable energy sector.

            In Slavery Poisons Solar Industry’s Supply Chains, Miles Pollard reports that roughly 80% of solar components are manufactured in China using slave labor.

European Parliament resolutions aim to curtail forced labor in China to make solar PVs. The 2021 U.S. Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act expanded the mandate that all U.S. companies importing silicon from Xinjiang confirm that supply chains are free of forced labor. The 2021 US Withhold Release Order prevented imports containing silicon from Hoshine Silicon Industry Co. Ltd and its subsidiaries from entering the U.S. until importing companies could prove they were not made with forced labor.

Making silicon (for solar panel safers or transistors) is like working in a volcano. Every 50,000 tons of silicon produce 500,000 tons of CO₂. Making solar panels burns trees and coal. The panels are mounted on cement. Producing 1 kg of cement emits 0.5 – 0.9 kg of carbon dioxide, accounting for 5% - 7% of global carbon emissions.

Solar PVs also use copper, aluminum, boron, phosphorous, PFAs and much more. Since recycling solar panels is not feasible or economical, expect an avalanche of solar panels at the landfill near you. Given that solar facility waste is hazardous and therefore costly to dispose of, will county commissioners require corporations who build solar facilities to post a bond—in the event that they go bankrupt—so that counties are not left with the expenses of solar disposal?

The Aratina Solar Project in Kern County CA planned to destroy 4,287 five-hundred-year-old Joshua trees in June, 2024 to power 93,000 homes (some say 180,000 homes) with “clean” (solar PV) energy. Has the “renewable” energy corporation cut down the trees?? I can’t find the answer.

Solar PVs provide only intermittent power. Users who expect electricity 24/7 require backup. Backup is available from either the fossil-fueled electric grid OR from batteries. Manufacturing batteries is a toxic, Earth-ravaging enterprise, dependent on fossil fuels, mining, chemicals and water. Operating batteries can be toxic and explosive. Batteries cannot power the U.S. grid for more than a day or two, at best. For details about battery storage, read Calvin Luther Martin’s 2019 article, “BESS Bombs.” (BESS stands for battery energy storage system.) Even though Vimeo took down all of his videos, the piece is still worthwhile.

Solar panels and batteries can catch fire. On a sunny day, you cannot de-energize solar panels. If a battery energy storage system catches fire, it’ll emit hydrogen cyanide, carbon monoxide and other toxic chemicals. No one can leave their homes, open their windows, run ventilation systems, use the roads or open a business until an EPA expert deems the area safe.

On a rooftop, solar panels increase electrical connections—and fire hazards.

What to do? Before mining or smelting for raw materials, solar corporations should obtain nearby communities’ free, prior and informed consent. They can use standards like the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition’s Solar Scorecard. The Solar Equipment Buyers’ Guide for Supply Chain Traceability explains how manufacturers can track finished solar modules’ material origins.

Before buying rooftop solar PVs OR approving industrial scale facilities—require the manufacturer to trace its supply chains and prove that substances have respected human rights and ecologically sound practices while mining, smelting and transporting raw materials. Require corporations to post a bond that ensures that taxpayers don’t pay to dispose of solar waste. Read “Discovering Power’s Traps: a primer for electricity users.”

            In Santa Fe County, NM, sign a petition for a moratorium on AES’ plan for an 800-acre solar facility with battery storage. PLEASE SIGN ASAP. The moratorium will be submitted Monday, July 22, 2024.

WIND

Check out this four minute video of wind turbines on fire, collapsing, and at end-of-life. Alice Friedemann, the Energy Skeptic, adds: Ice clinging to wind turbine blades adds weight, which can throw spinning blades out of balance, potentially damaging gear mechanisms. It can also change the blades’ aerodynamics and prevent them from spinning.

Offshore turbines are battered by ice bergs, waves and corrosion.

Insurance costs for wind and other “renewables” have increased due to the frequency and severity of claims. In 2018, only 15% of wind turbine insurance claims were due to extreme weather, wildfire, hurricanes, lightning, and tornadoes.

            Over time, build-up of dead insects and/or salt on off-shore turbine blades reduces power by up to 30%. (With the insect apocalypse, perhaps this won't be as much of a problem.) 

Repairing gear and bearing components is costly. Gearboxes commonly have abrasive wear, micropitting, scuffing and macropitting issues. The nacelle yaw and blade pitch mechanisms commonly suffer from false brinelling and fretting damage.

A broken wind turbine blade scattered debris along Nantucket’s South Shore, shutting down the offshore facility—and swimming on beaches—until further notice.

            Lyndsey Ward, a Highlands wind facility activist, says: “Not only are millions of CO₂ absorbing trees felled for turbines, hundreds of thousands of acres of ancient carbon-holding peat are dug up. If you add in the infrastructure requirements and grid connections, many more trees will be sacrificed and peat will be lost as remote wind factories are connected to a grid that cannot cope with them.”

            On July 26, Alice Friedemann will post “67 Reasons Why Wind Turbines Cannot Replace Fossil Fuels” at

https://energyskeptic.com

 

            See also wind cost analysis:

Cooking the Books 2: Lazard's Levelized Cost of Energy Estimates for Wind

            The federal Bureau of Ocean Energy management proposes building 1000 or more wind turbines in the Gulf of Maine, a critical habitat for the endangered North Atlantic Right Whale…without an environmental impact assessment. Public comments are due by July 22, 2024, and can be made here: https://www.regulations.gov/document/BOEM-2024-0030-0001

The draft Gulf of Maine WEA Environmental Assessment and numerous related documents are here: https://www.boem.gov/renewable-energy/state-activities/maine/gulf-maine

            Offshore wind facilities rely on submarine electric cables (CES) that “can induce noise, vibrations, interruptions to ecological continuity, and generate electromagnetic fields,” said Julie Lucas, a researcher at France’s National Museum of Natural History. “They can affect the behavior of electro-sensitive species which use natural electromagnetic fields to move and feed, such as sharks.”

The Waste and Destruction of One Industrial Wind Turbine Project in upstate NY. 

            Another problem with wind energy: it can destabilize the grid. 

AI & ENERGY

Nate Hagens’ interview with Daniel Schmachtenberger addresses the increasingly common narratives that AI will help us environmentally—and that given climate change’s existential threat, the ends justify the means. Given that evaluators (marketers?) don’t recognize their products’ impacts from cradle-to-grave, I find this mode especially trouble. Resources/references for Schmachtenberger’s claims.

On July 4, PBS News Hour presented AI and the energy required to power it fuel new climate concerns. No one here mentions (knows?) the Jevons Paradox: energy efficiency INCREASES consumption of raw materials, toxic emissions and hazardous waste…since it means MORE mining, chemicals, manufacturing and infrastructure.

Here’s a Brit Helen Beetham’s critique of AI for for health care—and so much more. If it’s time to build more AI, who is building and how does it benefit workers and citizens?

DATA CENTERS

In Louden County, Virginia, residents say that an eerie hum from one of 175 data centers keeps them up at night. Business Insider, 11.27.23.

            Bitcoin mines may also generate debilitating hum. Andrew R. Chow, Time, July 8, 2024. Is a Texas Bitcoin miner making people sick? Psychology Today, July 12, 2024.

            Again, who has authority to approve building permits for data centers—and based on what criteria?

SATELLITES

On December 29, 2022, the International Dark-Sky Association, representing more than 193,000 members in 70 countries who aim to reduce light pollution and promote healthy, functional outdoor lighting, appealed the FCC’s decision to grant SpaceX a license to launch up to 30,000 more satellites without performing an environmental review. Satellites fill the atmosphere with metallic dust and toxic chemicals. On July 12, 2024, the court ruled that satellite launches and deployment, no matter how many, “are deemed individually and cumulatively to have no significant effect on the quality of the human environment and are categorically excluded from environmental processing.”

The astronomers have 45 days to decide whether to appeal the 3-judge panel’s decision to the full 15-member Court of Appeals, and 90 days to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In court, judges, not astronomers, have authority to decide.

SMARTPHONES’ ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS

Sustainable practices and environmental impact of Samsung smartphone devices in the Western Province of Sri Lanka, Dec. 2023. Chamika Srimantha. This study explores the environmental impacts of Samsung smartphones in Sri Lanka’s Western Province. Researchers investigated users’ energy efficiency profiles, behaviors and disposal practices. They aimed to offer insights about the impact of smartphone usage on the local ecosystem in order to inform policies and consumer behaviors toward more environmentally responsible use of smartphones.

NUCLEAR POWER, NUCLEAR WASTE

There will be a joint National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) / Department of Energy Environmental Management (DOE EM) Town Hall Meeting near Santa Fe on Monday, July 22. The Town Hall will be held from 6-7:30 pm MDT at the Hilton Santa Fe Buffalo Thunder (map), 13 miles north of downtown Santa Fe on U.S. 84. It will be hosted by NNSA Administrator Jill Hruby and DOE EM's Candice Robertson. 
            If you are local or in the region, we hope you will join us in person at this meeting, bringing as many others with you as you can, to protest the creation of a plutonium warhead core ("pit") factory at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). LANL's pit factory, if it is ever completed and operated, will produce all the pits for the new Sentinel ICBM warhead, the W87-1. 

            If you haven’t yet seen SOS: The San Onofre Syndrome, do! This documentary reports on the legacy of nuclear power’s radioactive waste and Holtec Corporation’s plan to ship nuclear waste from the San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant in San Diego to Eunice, NM.

OFFLINE CAFEs

The Offline Club, a chain of digital detox cafes in the Netherlands, offers patrons a radical proposition: leave your phone at the door and rediscover the joys of analog entertainment.

            A Cambridge, MA café would rather go out of business than have people scrolling.

            Some restaurants offer free wine, 10% discount to customers for not using phones during meal.

            “Food Equity in Action: Asking Big Questions to Transform Big Tech, Big Pharma, Big Ag,” by Cara Judea Alhadeff, July 2024.

YOUTH

iPad use by kids linked to long-term emotional problems, Sharon Adarlo, July 13, 2024.

When youth learn how companies are explicitly trying to manipulate them, their social media use changes. Check out The Screenagers Podcast titled "From Junk Food to Social Media: How Teens Get Manipulated." 

Many states, including Florida, Indiana, Alabama, New York, Utah, Kansas and Vermont have either banned or restricted cellphones in k-12 classrooms—or they’re considering such legislation. Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin recently directed the State’s Department of Education to establish guidelines for a cell phone and social media-free education. Communication between students and parents—particularly in the event of an emergency—remains a question.

          Ghanaian youth in lithium mining communities vow to obstruct mining activities if demands on compensation are not met. 28 June 2024.

For an extraordinary compilation of Tech News, subscribe to www.patriciaburke.substack.com.