The convenience of modern technology vs preservation works
In todays world We use our mobile phones to make & accept calls, to make appointments, to send messages, to 'keep the wheels turning". So there is relevance to our industry - even emails are now sent & received, and materials / shopping is done, and of course social media is a large part of most lives today, and of course we are "encouraged" to use electric powered vehicles, despite the catastrophic fires we've seen with car transporting ships in recent years. Smoke - atmosphere?
While "green energy" offers undeniable convenience and safety, we must also consider the unspoken costs. We believe in a holistic view of
preservation, which includes understanding the impact of modern life on our world. Let's explore the journey of these ubiquitous devices.
Just try considering the real costs of having all that convenience in your pocket
The journey of a mobile phone begins far from our hands, often in distant lands where vital materials like cobalt are mined. This extraction frequently comes at a tragic human cost, including the suffering of children forced into dangerous labour. This exploitation stands in stark contrast to the ethical principles we are told to uphold in preservarion works.
Environmental scars of production
Another "inconvenient truth" which is our being forced upon us, to ensure "net zero", although we haven't asked for yet zero, and indeed we have been lied to about, is "net zero" because, of course we must all get electric vehicles.
First of all, We're not tree huggers. Our entire career has focused deeply on the use of traditional, sustainable and carbon nuetral materials, Greta is not the halo polishing angel that media portrays her to be ... that said, in fact We feel for Greta because We believe She's been used as another funded stooge who will be dropped like a hot stone once She's served Her purpose, and that's certainly happening. W3 feel that She has been abused to be honest opinion ... anyway, We are however a huge advocate of looking after our planet, but sadly the Gov's of this world are very "selective" with the truths, and they actively hide the true facts.
As an easily relateable example: we all have our mobile phones, which are battery powered, and we all are told, indeed being forced, to move to owning battery powered vehicles ... yet if you were to know of the immense damage caused to the environment from the mining of cobalt to create those batteries you might think maybe, just maybe, our Gov's aren't actually very nice.
The biggest cobalt mines are inD R Congo, Africa, where people; adults and children alike, are paid an absolute pittance (approx £2 per day) to crawl down into the unsupported and unprotected underground mines to extract cobalt. They are not provided with any ropes, harnesses or PPE of any kind, they have to dig with their bare hands, they don't even have a flashlight!
However with the cobalt comes sulphur, sulphur which is breathed in to moist .lungs (air/moisture) giving an acid that kills those poor people due to burning their lungs out. There is no NHS, in fact they have no health support whatsoever!
Once they get their loot back up to ground it then is washed in the surrounding rivers to clean the sulphur off as they only get paid their pittance for the cobalt itself, so the sulphur must be washed off before the cobalt is weighed. It is then transported in hundreds of heavily polluting diesel spewing lorries which last had a service ... never!
As time has progressed, the once fertile farm lands surrounding the mines and the rivers have become infertile, so the people who are now working in the mines, and burning more calories than before, and therefore needing more food intake can only get less food than before the mines opened because nothing can now grow on that land and there isno fish in the rivers, not even bacteria now survives. - The plants and trees which absorb CO² and in return supply some of the Oxygen element of the air we need to breathe, and live, have suffered - without even starting on the vast ecological impact on wildlife, bugs, beetles, birds etc etc.
The river water, bed and banks have changed colour, and the water is no longer consumable, whereas it always was before, it also contained fish - so now they have less to no water to add to less to no food.
Teams of Scientists have been allowed to now conduct analyses on the river itself and the surrounding farmlands to assess what the problem is.
They have conducted massive ecological surveys and have found that the river contains no life form whatsoever, not even bacteria, and obviously this water, which is now sulphuric acid; an acid powerful enough to dissolve fully hardened concrete, that once fed the farmland as nourising wate, has penetrated the surrounding land and killed that once fertile farmland.
All this has happened since the mine opened - and yet, oddly enough, not one of those pittance paid, starved, waiting to die from having their lungs burnt out poor workers have a mobile phone themselves, because they can't afford one!
Personally We don't see anything "ECO friendly" about any of that.
We are all bombarded with "net zero CO²" - yet our atmosphere contains just 0.04% of CO² - if that drops to 0.02% of CO², all vegetation on earth will die, and once all vegetation dies, all life forms on earth will die also as there'll be no oxygen and no food.
We'll finish in recognition of two great names:
Socrates (500 BC) .... our headline
Sir Isaac Newton's third law: "for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction" is easily transferable, it just needs thinking about.