Australia must stop importing ‘solar killer panels’ from China and to save turtles we should stop recycling plastic, says a visiting US environmentalist.
Almost everything we’re told about the environment and how to save it is wrong, said ‘rogue’ conservationist Michael Shellenbeger in Sydney on Saturday.
Solar panels have become cheaper not because of improvements in the technology, which were tiny, but because they are made by slave labour, Mr Shellenberger told the right-wing CPAC gathering held in Darling Harbour.
‘Rogue environmentalist’ Michael Shellenberger says everything we’re told about the environment is wrong
“The reason the Chinese have been able to make solar panels so cheaply is because they use Uighur Muslims who are housed in concentration camps,” he said during a 40-minute speech at the conference.
Sir. Shellenberger called for the manufacture of solar panels in Western countries, including Australia.
In September, Mr Shellenberger told a congressional hearing in Washington that the US had a “moral imperative” to stop importing solar panels from China.
He told the CPAC audience that this caused Democratic progressive star Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to ‘shift uncomfortably in her seat’ as ‘I hammered away at Chinese genocidal solar panels’.
Sir. Shellenbeger said the moment had been ‘very satisfying’ as Ms Ocasio-Cortez knew she was ‘in the wrong’ on this matter.
China uses the oppressed Uighur minority as slave labor to make solar panels, says Shellenbeger
According to Mr. Shellenberger, the Biden administration had promised to stop importing Chinese solar panels but had not done so.
“They just said ‘no, we’re keeping them’ – no explanation, no reason,” he said.
In July, Democratic politicians wrote to US Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas asking why solar panels from China were not on a list of banned imports from Xinjiang.
No response has been reported.
China has disputed the claim that Uighurs are forced to make the panels.
“The solar economy will darken quickly as the industry sinks under its own waste,” Shellenberger said.
The price drop for solar panels has little to do with improvements in the efficiency of their manufacture, argues Mr Shellenberger
Sir. Shellenberger, who has gained a reputation as a “rogue” environmentalist, also said the way to stop plastic in the oceans was to stop “pretending to recycle it”.
“The economics of recycling plastics don’t make sense,” he said, arguing that plastics were made from waste by-products of the petrochemical industry.
“(We) pretend we’re recycling plastic waste, send it to poor countries where they don’t have a waste disposal system, and it ends up in the oceans,” Shellenberger said.
Shellenberger says his testimony before Congress made left-wing Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez “shift ‘uncomfortably in her seat’”
Referring to famous images of a sea turtle needing a plastic straw pulled out of its nose in 2017, Mr Shellenberger claimed the creature was ‘only here’ because plastic had replaced the used turtle shell in the manufacture of many objects.
Sir. Shellenberger said before plastic became the standard substitute, things like his turtle glass were made from the real thing.
He explained the process.
“They used to pull sea turtles out of the ocean, hold them up over a fire, and then rip the shells off the back of them,” he said.
‘Most of them died, but some of them they sent back out – the Japanese almost drove these sea turtles out in their obsession with making jewelery out of sea turtle shells.’
Sir. Shellenberger argues that to stop plastic in the ocean, we should stop “pretending” to recycle it
Shellenberger argued that plastic waste should be incinerated.
“The solution to plastic waste, I know it’s shocking to hear, is to put it in landfill or incinerate it, that’s where it belongs,” he said.
‘It should be thrown in the bin, please don’t recycle your plastic waste going into the oceans.’
Sir. Shellenberger argued strongly for nuclear power to become the preferred “clean energy source”, which is the cause for which he is perhaps best known.
However, he also argued that almost everything people think they know about the ‘environmental crisis’ is wrong and exaggerated.
He argued that a mass migration to renewable energy would create ‘energy poverty’ around the world and could lead to starvation for millions.
During the September hearing in Congress, Mr. Shellenberger urged the United States to make its own solar panels.
The famous images of a turtle with a plastic straw in its nose give a wrong impression of plastic and what threatens marine mammals, says Shellenbeger
“We should not import any solar panels from China,” he said.
‘This is a basic, categorical moral imperative to stop importing solar panels from people who make them with effective slave labour.
“We say we are concerned about Muslim rights, but we don’t show it by importing solar panels.”
Shellenberger, who is running as a Democrat to be governor of California, describes himself as an ‘eco-modernist’.
The 51-year-old, who has worked in public relations and has authored a number of books to make his case, has fallen foul of many in the environmental movement for his opposition to renewable energy.