The pointing finger points

The book is done. Print and eBook versions formatted, links in the eBooks, covers, all of it. I just need to write a short description for the sales page. I’ll leave it overnight in case someone finds another correction but if everything is okay it’ll get loaded up tomorrow.

So I have time to blog properly for a change. Let’s see if I can remember how.

I have seen, on Twitter, references to the ‘six rivers’ that produce 90% of the world’s floating sea trash (figures may vary). This is held up to prove that we in the West aren’t the ones polluting the sea, it’s all coming from China and Africa.

Well I don’t know about Africa, but there’s a good reason for a lot of that waste to come from China. It’s because we Westerners send it there. Then we blame China for producing it and the Chinese have had enough.

As of January 1st, China has new rules for the ‘recyclables’ they will accept and they don’t want all the added crap. The plastic bags, the bits of mouldy food residue etc. That stuff that ends up dumped in China instead of over here and then washes into their rivers, then into the sea.

In addition to all the waste China produces itself, and has to deal with, they’ve been dealing with a big chunk of ours too. Then we blame them for being polluters. Oh, and we send the stuff over on those massive container ships, six of which can equal the polluting output of the total of all the cars on Earth. That’s really green.

There’s also the matter of rare earths – we use a lot of those over here but we produce little to none. We use a hell of a lot in those massive wind powered ornaments we set up everywhere to wave hello to the Green God. We plan to use much more in those electric cars we’re all going to drive to reduce pollution and save the planet. Yet we don’t mine those rare elements ourselves. Most of the supply comes from China.

Those ‘rare earths’ aren’t really rare. It’s more that they are thinly spread and don’t occur in convenient seams or deposits where you can mine the ore and get them out fairly easily. So you have to process tonnes of rock to get much of anything as an end product.

That processing produces vast amounts of waste, and that waste is very toxic indeed. So, to fuel our lust to claim we are reducing our pollutant output and saving the planet, we have created a market that causes Hell on Earth. That’s really green.

Now that China isn’t taking our waste any more, not unless we clean it first, the recycling game is suddenly far less profitable than it was. If China has enough of turning its country into a pit of sulphur, where will we get all our vital electronic components from?

Or if China gets pissed off at us and decides to stop emptying our bins, stop supplying us with stuff we dare not mine ourselves and dump its vast dollar reserves back into the market…

They can wipe us out without firing a shot.

We won’t have any petrol cars left by then. All our information is already on computers we can’t fix without new parts. Our power stations will be gone, replaced by lawn ornaments and fields of solar panels that depend on materials whose extraction produces far more pollution than the power stations ever did. Our Green God is pleased because that pollution only happens in a country that does not worship him. Well okay, it leaks into the sea but we can point the finger at China for that. That’s really green.

China does not need to invade. They just need to wait. Once we are utterly dependent on their rare earth supply with no backup technology left, once we are wading knee deep through plastic bags and McDonald’s wrappers, China will take over the world with nothing more than one little word.

‘No’.