Of course it could be argued that all labour in China is slave labour given their system in which everyone does what the Communist Party says
or vanishes into the prison torture system or the Laogai, Chinese for “Gulag” though oddly much less well known.
But we’re talking actual concentration camps here which is pretty brazen even by the standards of the Politburo.
Including, as Eric Worrall notes, the Chinese response that their workers are so happy they have very low staff turnover among “graduates of Xinjiang’s barbed wire fence and guard tower protected vocational training centres”.
Not to mention other protocols in place to discourage resignations including the 5.8 mm form QBZ-95 (Chinese military automatic title -- a real assault rifle).
... Since the Guardian is often a haven for that sort of (leftist) thinking ... we commend them for printing this story about oppressed Uyghurs in Xinjiang being forced, among other things, to produce the polysilicon used in many of the world’s solar panels including an estimated 40% in Britain.
The Guardian hates climate change, loves alternative energy, and hates oppression.
And it admits there’s a problem.
... The problem here being a very awkward tradeoff between affordability and, how shall we put it, labour standards.
Naturally the people buying the panels went bwa bwa bwa.
Specifically, the UK Ministry of Defence.
... The once-mighty British military is greener than Greta Thunberg, pledging carbon-neutral jet fighters by 2040 and building a vast solar farm in east Yorkshire, about whose slave-labor panels it burbled in typical bureaucratese
“We have robust procedures in place that allow us to vet and routinely monitor all aspects of our supply chain, which is kept under constant review.”
And you can take that to the bank… the fog bank. ...
... from the “I do not think it means what you think it means” department, the New York Times’ “Climate Fwd.” announces “A breakthrough for U.S. wind power”.
... “The Biden administration has promised to build up the offshore wind industry, and this week it began to make good on that pledge by granting final approval to the nation’s first large-scale offshore wind farm, about 15 miles off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, Mass.
The project is significant not only for the amount of energy it’s expected to generate — 800 megawatts, or enough to power about 400,000 homes — but for the signal it sends about roughly a dozen other offshore wind projects along the Atlantic Coast.”
Namely that the gold rush is on.
There’s money to be made in renewables.
You just need to shove aside petty concerns about efficiency, environmental impact and that slave labour thing."
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Sunday, May 23, 2021
Chinese solar panels are made with slave labor !
Source:
"One very awkward climate-related story to emerge recently is the extent to which solar panels are made with slave labour in China.