Save the planet! Poison a Chinese worker

Yet another example of white middle-class self-indulgence masquerading as "caring."  Every time you switch on an energy-efficient, warming friendly light, a Chinese worker gets sick:   WHEN British consumers are compelled to buy energy-efficient lightbulbs from 2012, they will save up to 5m tons of carbon dioxide a year from being pumped into the atmosphere. In China, however, a heavy environmental price is being paid for the production of “green” lightbulbs in cost-cutting factories. Large numbers of Chinese workers have been poisoned by mercury, which forms part of the compact fluorescent lightbulbs. A surge in foreign demand, set off by a European Union directive making these bulbs compulsory within three years, has also led to the reopening of mercury mines that have ruined the environment.   Andrew Bolt And doubly pity the poor bloody Chinese worker and peasant. They're the ones to suffer so we can have our "cheap" fashion-accessory solar panels (which is basically all they are good for), as companies there dump the highly toxic silicon tetrachloride produced while making these so-called green energy producers onto the ground in their villages and their fields.   But hey, what's that compared to someone in Northbridge or Cottesloe feeling good about themselves and superior to everyone else?   Seriously though, good intentions are not enough. Unless things are rigorously and dispassionately thought through, this kind of situation where unintended consequences either blunt efforts to do good, or even make things worse, will always be likely.   Sadly though, concern for the environment has been taken over by the kind of person who thinks that their emotions are facts.

Posted via email from Garth's posterous