Former Regulator Hat On.
Environmental Enforcement Dollars come disproportionately FROM the wealthy. The wealthy are concerned, above all else, about their property value, and their backyards. So you have the most environmental enforcement and regulations - even to the extent of NIMBY vs Solar fields - in wealthy counties. And wealthy countries.
The dirtiest, most polluting industry in the world - gold mining - occurs primarily in the most remote places in the world. That is not because there are no gold deposits in the Hamptons or Westchester County. The gold is in the earth. But gold is expensive because you have to dig up massive amounts of earth to get gold. Moving massive amounts of earth, and treating that earth with cyanide and mercury to concentrate the gold ore, is "best done elsewhere".
Years ago, I blogged about auto repair shops in Manhattan which migrated to Queens because of the land value, and subsequent externalization of repair. In the big picture (like the current election) this creates resentment of the regulator - the property value enforcement negotiator - by the regulated. And this has been flipped as "environmental injustice" by the new home to the dirty repair shop, and as "externalization" when it crosses national boundaries.
Both the "environmental injustice" of motor oil changing repair shops in Queens and the "externalization" of gold mining to the Amazon river basin and Congo rain forest are real, and appealing to liberals and intellectuals. At the same time, the increasing regulation of the Queens auto shop, as property values and regulation extend beyond Manhattan, creates a Trumpy backlash among working class, proud-to-self-describe "grease monkey" culture. Liberals herald Repair, but don't associate with them, culturally. Because repair is something poor people do better, and "elective upgrade" is something associated with wealth. Whether the "property" is real estate, or a flip phone, the trade sends value south, and regulation - north.
Through years of blogging, casting for intellectual swordfish rather than perch, I hope I've created an awareness that our white-guilt is being used, corruptly, to make the environmental enforcement disproportionately affect the man-in-the-middle repair and refurbishing industry. The WORST activity humans do - gold mining, e.g. - is the farthest out of sight, never talked about, never see it described on CBS 60 Minutes. But set up a shop in Guiyu, China, to repurpose gold-bearing chips, sold in competition to Intel or Cisco new chips made with mined gold, and you'll be labelled primitive, polluting, externalized, illegal, and counterfeit.
Money doesn't just "talk", it silences.
Orchestrated Environmental Malpractice. Intellectuals need to wrestle back our demonization and collateral damage, and do it quickly. The world needs Environmentalism 3.0 Personal property value (NIMBY) enforcement is 1.0, decrying the reuse practices of the poor, witnessed white-ly as externalization or fetishization of your guilty elective upgrade is 2.0, we need a global view. Carbon trading is a window, a potential breath of fresh air, but expect it to be controlled by the interests of the wealthy and privileged. Ocean plastic comes from countries poor enough to struggle to collect litter, but with the highest rates of product (gold bearing expecially) reuse and repair. White intellectual, you are being tricked into shredding and destroying a device which Africa's Tech Sector will reuse 3 times longer than you did before your upgrade.
Your guilt has been diagnosed as an "opportunity" by Planned Obsolescence OEMs and Big Shred. "Our Circular Economy" (keep metal in Europe) advocates have created a very, very, very evil charity(if un-self-aware) industrial complex (Basel Action Network, run by Jim Puckett), which is doing nothing good, only harming the poor and the net environment.
A big "racketeering" industry (Certification, R2 or E-Stewards) is privatizing the regulatory functions I'm writing about, and de-democratizing them. All the certifications are "pay to play", there is never an Asian or African tech sector on the Advisory Committees in these groups. They change the "problem" when the 1.0 or 2.0 solutions are exposed as fraudulent ("80% of exported - imported - secondhand product was NEVER waste, and CBS producer Solly Granatstein won't account for his unwitting Koolaid).
They are going to try to make it about "counterfeit" (reused and repurposed expensive equipment) and "data breach" (NO, breached data does NOT come from ANY 5 year old obsolete device, it's an insane conspiracy theory that your 2001 Dell or HP desktop is being "harvested" for data by Geeks in Ghana). It's going to create resentment not of the wealthy interests, who greenwash, but of the regulators, resulting in anti-government votes for executive branch "leaders" who make environmentalists the enemy.
Blog reads are declining, maybe I'm repeating myself. From time to time, I want to know if anyone is aware, does anybody care, does anybody see what I see? (1776 Musical, John Adams, who was "obnoxious and disliked")
