The cover for “Clean” Energy Exploitation is very provocative: A soldier with an AK47 machine gun overseeing the mining of minerals in one of the developing countries. Can you give us some background to the selection of that photo?
The subtitle of “Clean” Energy Exploitations, Helping Citizens Understand the Environmental and Humanity Abuses that Support “Clean” Energy, says it all and the photo illustrates how many African, Asian and South American children with yellow, brown and black skinned people are being enslaved and dying in mines and factories in developing countries to extract and process rare earth and exotic minerals required for solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles and utility-scale storage systems to work in the healthy and wealthy countries. We call these “blood minerals,” like blood diamonds.
Less-developed countries are mining for these materials in countries with virtually non-existent environmental regulations and non-existent labor laws, so wealthy nations can feel good about decarbonizing and moving to an all-electric society. This lack of oversight inflicts humanity atrocities and environmental degradation beyond comprehension to the local landscape.
Knowing that the exotic minerals and metals that are needed to make EV lithium batteries are coming from those developing countries, individuals need to make a personal decision: Is it ethical to buy an EV and support the environmental degradation and humanity atrocities occurring in those countries that are out of our sight?
“Clean” Energy Exploitations talks about the environmental degradation and crimes against humanity occurring around the world being the result of wealthy countries pursuing the Green New Deal concept. Can you elaborate on the United States’ existence and global emissions?
The most important fact about today’s environmental movement and the desire to achieve net zero emissions, and the clean energy exploitations this book explores, is that the United States of America, the largest economy in the history of mankind, representing four percent of the world’s population (330 million versus 7.8 billion) could literally shut down, and cease to exist, and the opposite of what you have been told and believe will take place.
Between 1980 and 2012, worldwide use of fossil fuels rose by 80 percent. Much of this was down to the rise of China, India and other countries as emerging industrial powers. These nations continue to account for much of the growth in fossil fuel consumption. The 2020 Statistical Review of World Energy notes that China had been responsible for a full three-quarters of the growth of energy consumption in the previous year, followed by India and Indonesia. China is also a leading player in the growing demand for oil and coal.
Simply put, in the United States, every person, animal or anything that causes emissions to harmfully rise could vanish off the face of the earth, or even die off, and global emissions will still explode in the coming years and decades ahead over the population and economic growth of China, India and Africa.
China, India, Indonesia, Japan and Vietnam plan to build more than 600 coal powered units, and African countries are planning to build more than 1,250 new coal and gas-fired power plants by 2030.
“Clean” Energy Exploitations helps citizens attain a better understanding that just for the opportunity to generate intermittent electricity that is dependent on favorable breezes and sunshine, the wealthier and healthier countries like Germany, Australia, Britain and America continue to exploit the most vulnerable people and environments of the world today to achieve their green goals.
How does China fit into the world’s energy equation?
With China having total domination of the supply chain of the exotic minerals and metals for “clean” electricity, every single EV battery, windmill and solar panel is money for Communist China. In addition, the world is paying no attention to the environmental degradation and humanity atrocities occurring in China during the mining for these “green” exotic minerals and metals.
None of the world’s largest environmental groups or most prominent environmental leaders have condemned the humanity atrocities and environmental degradation in China associated with the mining of those exotic minerals and metals [which] support the richer country’s green movements that are discussed in detail in the Pulitzer Prize nominated book “Clean” Energy Exploitations.
Several countries boycotted the 2022 Winter Olympics in China due to egregious human rights abuses and atrocities in Xinjiang, but with China controlling the minerals and metals to go “green” that utilize the same egregious human rights abuses and atrocities for the mining of those materials to go “green,” no countries are challenging the ethical nature of the ongoing exploitations.
According to Cambridge University Emeritus Professor of Technology Michael Kelly, replacing all the United Kingdom’s 32 million light duty vehicles with next-generation EVs would require huge quantities of materials to manufacture 32 million EV batteries, such as lithium, cobalt, copper and neodymium. EV enthusiasts have yet to accept the fact that there may not be enough of the “green” exotic minerals and metals in the world to build billions of EV batteries.
In “Clean” Energy Exploitations: Helping Citizens Understand the Environmental and Humanity Abuses that Support “Clean” Energy, the book highlights how Asians and Africans, many of them children from poorer and less healthy countries, are being enslaved and are dying in mines and factories to obtain the exotic minerals and metals required for the green energy technologies for the construction of EV batteries, solar panels and wind turbines.
The book states that the timeframe around 1900 changed everything for the world. Can you elaborate?
In the 1800s most people never traveled 100-200 miles from where they were born. Life expectancy throughout Europe hovered between 20 and 30 years of age. Food shortages and insecurity were leading concerns in the 18th century, especially in Europe, and these were exacerbated by reduced harvests yields. Disease was another leading cause of death, with rats and fleas being the common carriers of disease, specifically plagues, during this era.
Just a few hundred years ago, before oil, the world was unspoiled and dominated by Mother Nature and the wild animal kingdom. There were fewer humans competing with the animals due to humanity’s limited ability to survive what Mother Nature provided. Before oil, life was hard and dirty, life longevity was short, and there were many weather and disease related deaths.
Before 1850, approximately three-quarters of all products used by human beings came from living plants or animals competing for resources on the earth’s surface.
After oil, we created various modes of transportation, a medical industry, and electronics and communications systems. Oil reduced infant mortality, extended longevity from 40 years to more than 80, and gave the public the ability to move anywhere in the world via planes, trains, ships, and vehicles, and virtually eliminated deaths from most diseases and forms of weather.
In the richer and wealthier countries, the inventions of the automobile and airplane, and the use of petroleum in the early 1900s led us into the Industrial Revolution and winning World Wars I and II. The healthier and wealthier countries of today now have more than 6,000 products manufactured from petroleum derivatives that did not exist a few hundred years ago. Those products have resulted in the increase in longevity projections and virtually eliminated weather related fatalities.
Today, the world’s transportation systems of more than 50,000 merchant ships and more than 50,000 jets runs almost exclusively on refined oil products and that about half of the world’s food production relies on ammonia fertilizer produced from natural gas.
Over the last couple of centuries, the fuels and, most importantly, the products made from oil derivatives have been the cause for the prosperity of the population growth from one to eight billion.
With no known replacement for crude oil in the foreseeable future, environmental, social and governance (ESG) efforts continue their anti-crude oil agenda to tinker with the supply chain of crude oil via restrictions on exploration, fracking and oil well setbacks, to focus on electricity generation from breezes and sunshine, but that effort is an oxymoron, as crude oil is seldom ever used for the generation of electricity.
Ronald Stein and co-author Todd Royal tell the story that all Americans should embrace.
Excerpted by permission from “Clean” Energy Exploitations, Helping Citizens Understand the Environmental and Humanity Abuses that Support “Clean” Energy (Archway Publishing; June 4, 2021).
Ronald Stein, P.E. is an engineer and Founder of PTS Advance, a California-based company. Founded in 1995 by Ronald & June Stein, Principal Technical Services (PTS) was designed to meet a gap in the market. Client organizations were seeking greater transparency and flexibility as they contracted specialized talent to augment key roles in their organizations. As a project manager in the industry, Ronald knew first-hand that success relied upon attracting and retaining great candidates with a full compensation package, including PTO and medical benefits – an approach not common for typical engineering staffing services in the ’90s.
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Ronald Steinhttps://oilmanmagazine.com/author/ronald-stein/
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Ronald Steinhttps://oilmanmagazine.com/author/ronald-stein/
Oil and gas operations are commonly found in remote locations far from company headquarters. Now, it's possible to monitor pump operations, collate and analyze seismic data, and track employees around the world from almost anywhere. Whether employees are in the office or in the field, the internet and related applications enable a greater multidirectional flow of information – and control – than ever before.
