What is it about the climate-obsessed green-left that drives them to maniacally advocate the worst possible “solutions” for the least imaginable problems. Despite the reflexive screeching of “denier!”, very few people actually deny that climate change exists. The alarmist mantra, “climate change is real”, is an empty straw-man: almost no one says otherwise.
But a great many people see climate change as a minor threat, rather than the imminent existential crisis envisaged by the loonies in red dresses glueing themselves to roads. “The science” is firmly on the side of the “lukewarmers”, not the alarmists.
But if the Krazy Klimate Kultists are staggeringly wrong about the magnitude of the problem, their favoured solutions are making things even worse.
The green-left have fetishised wind turbines, those whirling blades of death that decimate birds and bats. The batteries for their eco-crucifixes and smugmobiles have a legacy of shocking pollution. The blades of decommissioned wind turbines are creating a gigantic landfill problem – one that will never decompose away.
Now the smug urban green bourgeoisie’s favourite scam is creating a monumental toxic waste problem of its own.
Junked home solar panels are creating a massive waste problem, with decommissioned panels in NSW this year alone accounting for up to 3000 tonnes of rubbish according to government estimates.
And suburbs such as Blacktown and Lake Macquarie — at the forefront of adopting solar technology over the past decade — will be hit hardest by the growing problem.
Flush with a river of taxpayers’ money, the urban middle-classes rushed to install solar panels over the last fifteen years. But those panels may only have a useful lifetime of… fifteen years. Suddenly, the toxic chickens of climate alarmism are coming home to roost.
Government commissioned research shows waste levels will hit 10,000 tonnes a year by 2025, fuelled by early systems reaching their end of life and the widespread use of shonky cheap panels.
One Nation Upper House MP Rod Roberts, who uncovered the figures through a parliamentary question to Environment Minister Matt Kean, wants to stop the panels being dumped into landfill.
Between 690 and 2700 tonnes will be dumped in NSW this year and will hit 71,000 tonnes by 2035.
“Matt Kean puts himself forward as some kind of environmental warrior, yet behind the scenes in dark landfills he’s more than willing to allow toxic solar panels to be buried,” Mr Roberts said[…]
An EPA-commissioned report estimates that by 2035 around 11,421 tonnes of hazardous waste including heavy metals will be generated per year from trashed panels, and 37,245 of crushed glass.
Surprise, surprise, where there’s a pile of government money, there’s a horde of grifting cowboys.
Australia has one of the worst problems in the world because of the solar boom of the 2010s incentivised by government subsidies and feed in tariffs, the report titled The Scoping Study for Photovoltaic Panel and Battery System Reuse, says.
It found high rates of low quality panels — up to 80 per cent of rooftop panels in some markets — and some fraudulent panels have added to the problem.
The issue is not without its irony.
But local councils are refusing to take the panels at kerbside clean-ups, leaving consumers stranded and paying hundreds of dollars to transport them to local tips or engage a specialist company.
Daily Telegraph
Which is some small compensation, I suppose, for those of who’ve been subsidising this green middle-class welfare scheme for the past 15 years.
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