A visiting American environmentalist advises Australia to cease purchasing “solar genocide panels” from China and to stop recycling plastic in order to conserve turtles.
Michael Shellenbeger, a ‘rogue’ conservationist, stated in Sydney on Saturday that nearly everything we are told about the environment and how to rescue it is false.
Mr. Shellenberger told the Darling Harbour meeting of the right-leaning CPAC that solar panels have grown less expensive not due to minuscule technological advancements, but due to the use of slave labor.
Michael Shellenberger, a so-called “rogue environmentalist,” asserts that everything we have been told about the environment is false.
During a 40-minute speech at a conference, he stated, “The Chinese have been able to produce solar panels so cheaply because they exploit Uighur Muslims held in concentration camps.”
Mr. Shellenberger advocated for the production of solar panels in western nations, particularly Australia.
Mr. Shellenberger told a Senate hearing in September that the United States had a “moral duty” to cease buying solar panels from China.
He told the CPAC audience that this caused Democratic progressive icon Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to’shift uneasily in her seat’ as ‘I pounded on Chinese solar genocide panels’
Mr. Shellenbeger described the event as “very gratifying,” as Ms. Ocasio-Cortez realized she was “in the wrong” regarding this topic.
Mr. Shellebiger asserts that China uses the oppressed Uighur minority as slave labor to produce solar panels.
According to Mr. Shellenberger, the Biden administration had pledged to cease importing solar panels from China but had failed to do so.
He stated, “They simply declared “nyah, we’re keeping them” with no explanation or rationale.”
In July, Democratic politicians wrote to US Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas to inquire why Chinese solar panels were not on a list of Xinjiang imports that were prohibited.
No response has been reported.
China has contested the idea that Uighurs are compelled to produce the panels.
Mr. Shellenberger stated, “The economics of solar will rapidly deteriorate as the industry collapses behind its own garbage.”
Mr. Shellenberger thinks that the decrease in price of solar panels has little to do with improvements in their manufacturing efficiency.
Mr. Shellenberger, who has earned a reputation as a “renegade” environmentalist, stated that the only way to prevent plastic from entering the oceans was to quit “pretending to recycle it.”
“The economics of plastic recycling make no sense,” he argued, noting that plastic was a byproduct of the petrochemical industry.
Mr. Shellenberger stated, “(We) pretend to recycle plastic waste, send it to poor nations without waste disposal systems, and it ends up in the oceans.”
Mr. Shellenberger claims that his congressional testimony caused the left-leaning Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to move uncomfortably in her seat.
Referring to the 2017 photographs of a sea turtle having to have a plastic straw retrieved from its nose, Mr. Shellenberger said that the sea turtle was “only here” because plastic had replaced tortoise shell in the manufacture of numerous products.
Before plastic became the normal material, Mr. Shellenberger’s tortoise-shell glasses were created from the actual material.
He described the procedure.
‘They used to drag sea turtles out of the water, hold them over a fire, and then remove their shells,’ he claimed.
The Japanese nearly drove these hawksbill sea turtles to extinction due to their fascination with using sea turtle shell to make jewelry.
Mr. Shellenberger says that in order to prevent plastic from entering the ocean, we must cease “pretending” to recycle it.
Mr. Shellenberger advocated for the burning of plastic garbage.
“The solution to plastic trash, and I know this is startling to hear, is to dispose of it in landfills or burn it,” he stated.
Please stop recycling your plastic debris that ends up in the oceans and dispose of it in the garbage.
Mr. Shellenberger presented a compelling argument for nuclear power to become the preferred source of ‘clean energy,’ the cause for which he is arguably best known.
However, he also contended that nearly what people believe they know about the “environmental disaster” is false and exaggerated.
He warned that a global transition to renewable energy would cause “energy poverty” and lead to the starving of millions.
During his September testimony before Congress, Mr. Shellenberger urged the United States to produce its own solar panels.
Mr. Shellenbeger argues that the iconic photos of a turtle with a plastic straw up its nose misrepresent plastic and the threats it poses to marine creatures.
He stated, “We should not import any solar panels from China.”
“It is a categorical moral imperative that solar panels not be imported from countries where they are produced by slave labor,”
We claim to be concerned about Muslim rights, but we do not demonstrate this concern by importing solar panels.
Mr. Shellenberger, who ran for California governor as a Democrat, describes himself as a “ecomodernist.”
As a result of his hostility to renewable energy, the 51-year-old who has worked in public relations and produced a number of books to promote his cause has angered many in the environmental movement.