27 minute read
Information War
Pro-Russia Propaganda Proliferates in China as Moscow’s Isolation Grows
By Eva Fu
If russia needs to find some support amid the piling Western condemnation for its invasion of Ukraine, all it takes is a browse on the Chinese internet.
In China’s tightly controlled online space, pro-Moscow sentiment dominates. Celebrities are chastised for voicing sympathy for Ukraine. Hawkish Russian remarks are cheered. And some Chinese users describe Russian President Vladimir Putin as a hero standing up to the West.
The enthusiasm has extended to e-commerce. Some Chinese have flocked to a Russian-owned online store that was said to be endorsed by the Russian Embassy in China, clearing shelves of its products, from chocolates to wafers and vodka.
“Every chocolate is a bullet fired at the nazis, ypa!” wrote one buyer in the store’s review section, in an apparent reference to Putin’s claim that he wanted to “de-Nazify” the country, in justifying the invasion.
The outlet, known as the Russian National Pavilion, saw its online following soar threefold within a day, and has received a total of 50,000 orders since Feb. 28, according to Chinese media reports. By March 2, a video had popped up from Sergey Batsev, an ambassador to China for the Russian nonprofit Business Russia, thanking “Chinese friends” for supporting his country in such “difficult times.”
“During this complicated and ever-changing international situation, we have seen our old Chinese friends’ camaraderie,” he said. “There’s an old Chinese saying that a goose feather sent from far away conveys profound affections. We will cherish this deep friendship in our hearts.”
Meanwhile, nationalist voices on social media have cheered a strong Russia–China partnership.
“I said long ago that with China acting as a shield for Russia, whatever Western sanctions will dissolve to nothing,” wrote a nationalist Chinese scholar on Weibo, China’s Twitter equivalent. The post included photos that appeared to show long lines of shoppers inside a Russian store in northern China. He had visited the website of the Russian National Pavilion twice without finding anything available to buy, he said.
It’s unclear to what extent these viewpoints reflect the broader public sentiment in China, due to Beijing’s heavy censorship that has silenced voices from the other side.
Several Chinese actors have been censured on Weibo after posting proUkraine remarks. Social media posts by
Sergey Batsev, an ambassador to China for Russian nonprofit Business Russia, thanks Chinese buyers for their support for a Russian online store.
A television screen shows Chinese state-backed news coverage on the Russia–Ukraine conflict, at a shopping mall in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China, on Feb. 25.
prominent Chinese scholars opposing Russia’s invasion were taken offline, as were suggestions of Russia being on the losing side. A video by a Ukrainian vlogger popular in China, entreating her fans in Mandarin to “respect lives” and “not take war as a joke,” was largely erased from the Chinese internet and is only viewable on Twitter, a platform banned in China.
When the English Premier League announced plans to show solidarity with Ukraine this weekend by having club captains wear armbands in the colors of the Ukrainian flag, and displaying on stadium screens the slogan “Football Stands Together” printed on the flag, the league’s Chinese broadcast partner reacted by pulling its scheduled coverage.
Fostering a pro-Russian mood, or at least the impression of it, appears to be part of Beijing’s designs from the beginning.
Two days before Putin started bombing Ukraine, leaked censorship rules showed that Chinese state media had been told to ensure that their content not appear anti-Russia or pro-Western.
As the Chinese regime has refused to use the word “invasion” to characterize Russia’s attack, the word is taboo in coverage across Chinese media. When a reference is necessary, media outlets have adopted Moscow’s descriptor of “special military operation” or used the vague phrase “the current situation.”
In recent press conferences and public statements, Chinese officials have taken an awkward line of refusing to openly back either side. They have simulta-
neously refused to denounce Russia’s attack, recognized that Russia has legitimate security concerns, maintained that all countries’ sovereignty should be respected, called for a peaceful settlement to the crisis, and blamed the United States for inflaming the prospect of war.
But the Chinese regime’s propaganda machinery has taken on a more fiery tone.
While most media coverage in the country is focused on the Beijing Paralympics, the relatively few Chinese state media reports on the crisis have played down criticism of Russia. The hashtag “multiple countries refuse to sanction Russia,” pushed by nationalist tabloid Global Times, got 120 million views in one day on Weibo.
“Russians, please aim your bullets more accurately,” a reporter from the Chinese Communist Party-owned newspaper Jinhua News wrote in a post upon learning that 70 Japanese had volunteered to join the Ukrainian army.
Crude jokes online about welcoming beautiful Ukrainian women refugees to China and pro-Russia remarks have made lives more difficult for Chinese nationals stuck in Ukraine. Some said they were threatened by angry Ukrainians when going to supermarkets.
Beijing’s stance didn’t go unnoticed by Russians.
Maria Zakharova, Russian foreign ministry spokesperson, on March 3 said that Moscow appreciates Beijing’s “impartial and unbiased vision of the Ukrainian issue.”
China “avoids being misled by Western ploys,” she told a news briefing.
A child looks out from a school bus in Newtown, Conn. American children today seem to be more disinterested in education, compared to past generations.
PHOTO BY JOHN MOORE/GETTY IMAGES
CREATIVITY AND ENTHUSIASM define childhood, but American children seem to be losing these gifts, teachers say.
American children are less creative and less motivated than past generations. When teachers compare today’s children with their peers from only a few years ago, there’s a clear difference, according to Page Park, an Indiana teacher with 24 years of experience.
“They don’t know how to think for themselves, too. I do have a few kids that are really good at problem-solving, but not as many. They’re not good at problem-solving,” she said.
Park said that since she first started teaching, creativity has declined. Students today don’t look for solutions to simple problems.
For instance, if a student found he didn’t have a pencil, he wouldn’t ask for a spare, Park said.
“I’ve taught most of my career,” Park said. “I’m talking high school students who just don’t think to ask, ‘Hey, can I borrow a pencil?’ And I have them available where they can just take them.”
When Park looks at her classroom, she sees a disconnected generation.
“They talk about games a lot. They never talk about going outside. They talk about staying up late. Their sleep rhythms are awful,” Park said.
“I have one that was telling me last week or the week before that he doesn’t go to bed until three o’clock in the morning. They might be a little more rigid in movement.”
Other teachers in different states have seen a similar change.
Theresa, a teacher in New York and writer for The Developing Mom, also said her students seem to lack creativity and motivation. To protect the privacy of her students, Theresa chose to remain anonymous.
“I thought, all I have to do is just show up every day and do my very best, and I can inspire these kids. I can change your life. Every teacher thinks that,” she said. “But what I started to see was the students, they were not inspired, no matter what I or my fellow teachers did.”
In the three schools where Theresa has taught, she’s found this same problem.
Theresa, a Nigerian immigrant, said that the children she grew up with had far greater creativity and motivation than the children she now teaches. In her experience, American children give up when challenged.
“Why is it that these kids show up and they are completely disinterested in education? It baffled me,” she said.
About half of the students at Theresa’s current school are homeless, but they lack the drive to escape the poverty that Nigerian children had, she said.
Theresa knows the challenges of poverty. As a child in Nigeria, she and her siblings often had only one daily meal, but they and other children were desperate to get educated and succeed.
“To see people waste their opportunity makes me want to cry,” Theresa said. “Any child in Nigeria would give an arm and a leg to come to this place. And you guys have everything, and you throw it away.”
Jessica Bonner, a speech pathologist for elementary schoolers in Birmingham, Alabama, also said she sees a difference between children today and in the past. They don’t usually talk about what they like to do together, she said. Instead, they seem centered on absorbing online videos other people make.
“The thing that changed was the cellphones. Smartphones, though, were the thing that started the change. So now students are looking at and relying on the devices more,” Bonner said.
Recently, she asked a group of children in one of her classes to choose an educational topic for a music video they would create. Instead of debating or making a
choice, they looked at her blankly, then started talking with each other about unrelated subjects.
“I honestly believe that elementary school students are so accustomed to having to follow a set curriculum throughout the day with little to no input from them that they unconsciously shelve their ideas,” Bonner said.
In the stories these teachers tell, creativity and the drive for success seem closely connected. Creativity arises from an intense desire for some result. When children feel apathetic, they don’t create.
Trading Dreams for Screens
Experts have several theories on why American children are less creative. But the first and most popular theory is that living constantly online damages a child’s ability to think and self-motivate.
Teachers who contacted Insight agreed that too much time online is part of the problem, and the statistics back them up.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention statistics suggest that in 2010, something changed mental health for teens.
From 1999 to 2010, only a few years had teen self-harm rates above 300 injuries per 100,000 people or suicide rates above 10 per 100,000 people. But after 2010, suicide and self-harm rates for young people 18 to 24 have never dropped below these numbers, and have generally trended upward.
According to Pew Research Center, one of the biggest changes in society during the same time period was a rise in cellTeachers across the United States are seeing a disconnected generation in schools today, and are struggling to engage and inspire students in the classroom.
Page Park, school teacher
phone ownership.
Other surveys suggest that young people spend extremely high amounts of time online.
While correlation doesn’t necessarily equal causation, in the experience of both teachers and psychologists, excessive time online and mental problems tend to go together.
Psychologist Dr. Leonard Sax said that American children spend much more time online compared to children from other countries.
“In this country, for example, it’s very common for kids to go to bed with their phones, or for boys to have video game consoles in their bedrooms,” Sax said. “It’s actually unusual in continental Europe.”
As children have started living online more, child mental illness has increased dramatically, Sax said. Somehow, excessive time online seems linked to disengagement, lack of motivation, and a wide variety of other symptoms.
“Over the last three years, American kids have gone off the deep end and are now many, many times more likely to be anxious, depressed, disengaged, unmotivated, and not paying attention
compared to kids in Europe, Australia, or New Zealand,” he said.
Growing Up Smart
According to teachers, children today tend to spend their whole lives tied to their smartphones.
Even the friendships of today’s children don’t resemble those of children a decade ago, Park said. They revolve around what happens online. For them, it seems like the internet is ‘the real world.’
Jessica Bonner, speech pathologist
“It’s all about what he or she did on TikTok,” Park said.
Park, who also teaches yoga, said that children seem separated from their bodies because of their extensive online life.
“If they get frustrated with something, they don’t know how to deal with that within their body. They don’t know how to shut their nervous system down and come back into a rest-and-digest state,” she said. “So they live in this constant state of panic and anxiety.”
Fixation on technology leaves children isolated from nature, too, Park said, and this separation from nature makes them less creative.
“They don’t go with their toes in the grass,” she said. “There’s a huge disconnect between kids and nature, a huge disconnect between what’s going on with them physically.”
When children live online, they tend to consume the content of others without developing their own thoughts, Bonner said.
“They’re pretty much being influenced by what they’re seeing,” she said. “That definitely contributes heavily to them not being as creative, because they’re being influenced by someone else.”
According to Dr. Patrick Capriola, founder of the education website Strategies for Parents, kids learn creativity in early childhood. To do these activities well, they have to practice without distractions.
When children spend more time looking at screens, they don’t take advantage of this crucial time, he said. Instead of experiencing life, processing it, then engaging with it, they risk being overwhelmed by stimuli.
“The more time children spend in front of a screen, the less time they have to be with their imagination, focus on their thoughts, and experiment with them in creative ways, because the content behind the screen often does it for them,” Capriola said.
“This exposure has the potential to degrade their ability to develop these skills, because the child has less time to conceptualize ideas on their own.”
Too Easy
Theresa said she believes that American children aren’t creative because others solve their problems for them.
With access to the internet and parents who quickly intervene instead of letting kids struggle a little, children approach life as if someone else will always solve their problems, she said.
“Every little problem that they have is immediately solved for them. And if it can’t be solved by their parents, they just find a resource online,” she said.
When children don’t have challenges to overcome, they don’t know what to do when they face a difficult concept in school, Theresa said.
Teachers at her school struggle to find a solution to this problem, she said. In her teachers’ lounge, how to help kids who won’t face challenges is a common discussion. But there aren’t any good answers.
“We complain about the issue, and then we just accept it. Like, this is just how America is. This is how the kids are,” she said. “You just have to move on.”
(Top) To meet a rising demand, a number of colleges and universities have developed esports programs, including some of the top-rated in the nation, such as the University of California–Irvine. (Above) Before the advent of social media like TikTok, children’s mental health was generally better than what is seen today.
When children spend more time looking at screens, they don’t experience life, process it, and engage with it, so they risk being overwhelmed by stimuli.
Psychologists call this sort of dependence on others “learned helplessness.” When parents help their children too much, children conclude that they don’t have agency.
The problems caused by learned helplessness resemble the problems caused by too much time online. They include depression, underachievement, and anxiety.
Issues at School
Another reason why kids don’t create may be the nature of school today. According to Sax, many things about the American education system leave it struggling to capture the interest of children.
Unlike schools in Europe, which focus on teaching kids to enjoy school before teaching them academic skills, American schools often teach kids skills before children are old enough to learn them, Sax wrote in his book “Boys Adrift.”
Because boys develop more slowly than girls, this trend harms them more, he said.
Boys who are too young to succeed at school feel like they’re stupid, Sax said. They start to hate school because it forces them to fail.
After about 20 years of trying to persuade school leaders to change how they teach, Sax has found that for the most part, they’re unwilling to listen.
“When you approach a principal or school administrator with that kind of concern, you are a nuisance, and you will accomplish nothing. They may or may not say something nice, but it doesn’t really matter,” he said.
Park said that in her experience, schools do a poor job with children that aren’t academically gifted. Although everyone should have some competence with reading and math, not everyone needs to be great at it.
A child could be a creative artist, creative carpenter, or creative builder, but a school that focuses on teaching academic subjects often will let that child down, she said.
“I feel like those kids who maybe would have been creative in some of those other areas, maybe they would be an amazingly creative welder. They would be able to create a beautiful thing, given the opportunity,” Park said.
But because they struggle in more academic subjects, they aren’t able to go into this program.
College isn’t for everyone, Page said, and there are many other good ways to earn a living.
Times Are Changing
It may be that children are more perceptive of what the future will hold than adults are, said Robert Powers, a college counselor.
Although excessive online activity seems tied to mental problems, online life is here to stay, he said. Life in the future will likely be even more online.
Children won’t be creative, relationally connected, and ambitious in the same way they once were, he said. But we’ll use the same words to describe what they do in new settings.
This generation will become esport athletes and online friends, he said.
“The child who was once glued to his screen was really ahead of his time, trying to balance two worlds that really ought to have been combined all along,” Powers said.
A digital or “blended” world is the future, he said.
“And I do think that also means that the kids are all right,” he said.
But to many teachers who knew children before they lived online, creativity, determination, and friendships today seem less than what they could be.
Park said that she has always loved technology. But she has seen that too much time online cuts her students off from the beauty of nature and from human relationships.
“It’s not as good as it could be,” she said.
NATO MILITARY EXERCISE
MEMBERS OF THE U.S. ARMY
participate in the Crystal Arrow 2022 exercise in Adazi, Latvia, on March 8. Approximately 2,800 soldiers from Albania, Canada, Czech Republic, Italy, Iceland, Montenegro, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Latvia, and the United States are training for interoperability during tactical military operations.
PHOTO BY PAULIUS PELECKIS/GETTY IMAGES
ENE RGY ENVIRONME NTAL COSTS OF LARGE-SCALE SOLAR
Large solar farms can threaten natu ral landscapes, species, habitats
BY NATHAN WORCESTER
The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System in the Mojave Desert in California, on Feb. 20, 2014.
THE SOLAR LAND RUSH,
Kevin Emmerich said, first hit the desert under President Barack Obama.
“He really wanted to put a lot of large-scale green energy on public lands,” Emmerich, a former field biologist and National Park Service ranger, told Insight.
He and his wife, field biologist and artist Laura Cunningham, soon realized that arid land in the United States’ southwestern deserts—particularly the Mojave Desert and the Great Basin—was at risk of being taken up by utility-scale solar.
In 2008, they formed a nonprofit, Basin & Range Watch, to resist what they saw as encroachment.
Emmerich says much of the struggle involved pushing back against the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) designations, which often identify the prospective sites of large solar farms as non-scenic. Under BLM’s Visual Resource Management (VRM) classification scheme, such areas are often slotted in the lowest class, Class IV.
“In the Mojave Desert, the perception of that is changing,” Emmerich said. “As the population grows, and as people are more mobile and drive out there from the bigger cities, fewer and fewer people actually believe there’s nothing else there.”
Today, the Biden administration is contemplating a rule change reminiscent of moves under the Obama administration.
Under the Energy Act of 2020—the same act that laid the groundwork for redefining fuel minerals such as uranium as noncritical minerals— BLM would lower both capacity fees and rental rates for wind and solar on public lands.
As with its response in 2008, Basin and Range Watch is opposed to this change and what it suggests about the government’s attitude toward the industry.
“We’re giving them a break because they’re the sacred solar developer,” Emmerich said.
He thinks the new standard could also create a precedent for a future administration to reduce the rates or fees for oil and gas exploration—something he also opposes.
While Emmerich’s concern about fossil fuel drilling isn’t uncommon in the environmental movement, Basin & Range frequently stands alone, or almost alone, when opposing solar and wind projects.
Many high-profile environmental groups are willing to see habitat taken up by solar, he said, “because it’s going to be impacted by climate change anyway.”
SOLAR POWER TOWER DESIGNS CAN MELT BIRDS, BUTTERFLIES, AND OTHER LIVING THINGS UNLUCKY ENOUGH TO STRAY TOO CLOSE. CALIFORNIA’S IVANPAH SOLAR PLANT HAS BEEN ESTIMATED TO KILL 6,000 BIRDS PER YEAR, AS OF 2016.
Under its “Smart from the Start” framework, the Wilderness Society emphasizes the benefits of placing large solar installations on public lands, in part to realize its goal of “net-zero emissions from public lands and waters.”
The Sierra Club, meanwhile, endorsed BLM’s Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan (DRECP), which could see hundreds of thousands of desert acres set aside for solar and wind energy projects.
BLM officials didn’t respond by press time to a request by Insight for comment. Insight also sought comment on the BLM’s proposal from multiple environmental organizations, including the Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society.
Low Power Density, High Impact on Habitats
Scott Cashen, a field biologist in California who consulted on renewable energy projects, shares Emmerich’s concerns about the conservation of desert land.
“There was this big push to need a lot of big parcels of land, and the easiest place to look was in the desert,” he told Insight. “The desert was just getting destroyed. The first step is to come in with heavy equipment and scrape the site clean of anything living.” One fundamental issue with solar power, Cashen said, is the need for large swaths of land. This suggests a much lower power density than natural gas, nuclear, or other conventional power sources. A 2018 article estimated that utility-scale photovoltaic solar has a power density of roughly 5.7 watts per square meter; natural gas, by contrast, has a power density of 482.1 watts per square meter, almost 85 times higher (though with a wide possible range). Nuclear power clocked in at a power density of 240.8 watts per square meter, more than 42 times higher than utility-scale photovoltaic solar; while coal power, at 135.1 watts per square meter, had almost 24 times its counterpart’s power density.
In a 2010 primer on power densities, environmental scientist Vaclav Smil arrived at similar estimates.
Smil projected that the conversion to renewable energies would require a staggeringly large power infrastructure, “spread over areas 10 to 1,000 times larger than today’s infrastructure of fossil fuel extraction, combustion, and electricity generation.”
“Higher reliance on renewable energies may be desirable ... but inherently low power densities of these conversions will require a new system of fuel and electricity supply that will be
An employee with Ipsun Solar installs solar panels on the roof of the Peace Lutheran Church in Alexandria, Va., on May 17, 2021.
able to substitute for today’s dominant practices only after decades of gradual development,” Smil wrote.
“With that land area, we’re talking about massive amounts of habitat loss, and habitat fragmentation and degradation in general,” Cashen said.
In addition to the panels themselves, the disruptive new infrastructure for utility-scale solar might include everything from new substations and roads to miles of additional transmission lines, a challenge that’s intensified if the solar installation is relatively far from the communities it serves.
“People still think, ‘Oh, that product is made from 100 percent solar energy, I can feel good about buying this,’” Cashen said. “But that solar energy facility involved destroying thousands of acres of pristine desert environment. People just don’t know.”
Emmerich echoes Cashen’s comments on power density.
“The impact of a solar project is almost laughable to us, simply because it’s low-density energy.”
Cashen points out that the additional transmission lines increase the risk of fire, especially in wildfire-prone parts of California.
“California law requires a four-foot clearance around powerlines in areas at high risk of fire. For that reason, the significant new transmission infrastructure required for utility-scale solar can result in significant tree loss.”
Cashen noted that large installations can even influence the surrounding microclimate, potentially elevating the likelihood of a major fire.
The new transmission lines required for utility-scale solar also increase the risk of bird collisions, exacerbating the major threat to avian life posed by solar installations themselves.
Solar power tower designs—a less common type of utility-scale solar design in which mirrors concentrate solar rays on a single point—can melt birds, butterflies, and other living things that are unlucky enough to stray too close.
California’s Ivanpah Solar Plant, located in the Mojave Desert, has been estimated to kill 6,000 birds per year, as of 2016.
While the issues with solar power towers were predictable, Cashen said that bird deaths linked to photovoltaic panels, the more common design in large-scale solar farms, came as a surprise.
“The more people started looking, the more dead birds started showing up at these photovoltaic facilities,” he said. “It’s to the point now that if you look, you’ll find it.”
Sparrow hawks, Western grebes, Virginia rails, American coots, and scores of other species have all been spotted dead or dying at industrial solar facilities in America’s deserts.
The rapid installation of new renewable energy facilities raises another question: Are governments and companies rushing to build new large-scale solar farms doing all they should to protect animals displaced by those projects?
85 TIMES HIGHER
A 2018 article estimated that utility-scale photovoltaic solar had a power density of roughly 5.7 watts per square meter; natural gas, by contrast, had a power density of 482.1 watts per square meter, almost 85 times higher.
Last year, after the rapid approval of Nevada’s Yellow Pine Solar Project, wildlife biologists moved more than 130 desert tortoises, a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. Thirty of the relocated tortoises were killed, possibly by predators in their new environment after relocation stress made the reptiles vulnerable. Emmerich said the incident brought his organization welcome attention.
The developer of Yellow Pine, NextEra Energy Resources, didn’t respond by press time to a request for comment.
Cashen and Emmerich note another troubling phenomenon.
In the bone-dry deserts of the American Southwest, where drought is making water scarcer by the year, the installation of industrial-scale solar has involved water trucks that dampen roads to keep dust from rising.
That water, as well as the shade from the solar panels, could attract lizards, snakes, and other animals. Those very features, Cashen says, can make the panels an ecological trap. The lizards are often run over by the water trucks, while bird nests near the panels may be subjected to scorching temperatures that fry the eggs.
Emmerich said the application of water to control dust has often failed to work.
“If you’ve been out here in the summertime, you know how hot it is and how quickly water evaporates,” he said, adding that the disrupted earth can give rise to dust devils.
Some Resistance Successful
Although opponents of utility-scale solar have often faced an uphill battle, they have scored some victories.
In rural Vermont, the removal of habitat for bobolinks and other grasslands had been a frequent point of contention, according to Annette Smith, executive director of Vermonters for a Clean Environment (VCE).
Yet while many controversial projects have progressed, in 2015, Green Mountain Power failed to secure approval for a proposed 19,000-panel array on a prison property in Windsor, Vermont.
“The site was well known to be excellent grassland bird habitat,” Smith told Insight.
Local reporting from the Valley News described how 60 neighbors showed up at a hearing on the project. According to that story, virtually all of the neighbors voiced opposition to the installation, which would have provided power for 1,200 homes.
Allen Palmer, an official with Vermont’s Division of Property Management, previously wrote in an email to other Vermont officials that whoever represented the state at the hearing on the project should “let the people vent.”
“Unfortunately, it may be too little too late,” Palmer wrote, according to correspondence obtained through a public records request and shared with Insight.
“The project was dropped,” Smith said.
Smith, who said she had been living off the grid using solar and propane since 1989, expressed skepticism about the BLM’s proposed rule change, which would lower costs for renewable energy companies operating on public land.
“This industry is heavily subsidized and getting tax breaks everywhere,” she said. “We’re just looking at more centralized power.”
Officials from Green Mountain Power and the State of Vermont didn’t respond by press time to a request for comment.
Emmerich is proud of his recent successful effort to halt the enormous Battle Born Solar project, which would have claimed roughly 14 square miles of Nevada desert and been the state’s largest solar farm.
“You can see beautiful mountains, and there’s a lot of history and archaeology up there,” he said.
That success was enabled in part by a local activist group, “Save Our Mesa!”
Arevia Power, which proposed the project, didn’t respond by press time to a request for comment.
Cashen is concerned that the environmental downside of solar power isn’t fully understood. He speculates that, in the not-so-distant future, much of America’s desert land could end up littered with the toxic, abandoned remains of old solar farms.
“All these things are so new,” he said.
The Mojave Desert in California City, Calif., on Oct. 2, 2021. An expert speculates that in the not-so-distant future, much of America’s desert land could be littered with the abandoned, toxic remains of old solar farms.
Perspectives
A cargo ship loaded with containers leaves the Lianyungang Port Container Terminal in Lianyungang, Jiangsu Province, China, on March 24, 2021.
PHOTO BY HECTOR RETAMAL/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
CHINA IS HOARDING COMMODITIES
The Ukraine war is strengthening China’s relative economic power. 45 Can America’s wind industry stage a rebound in the coming years? 47 Russian banks may turn to alternatives, bypassing the SWIFT system entirely. 48
WIND POWER HIT BY SUPPLY WOES
