RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
May 11 to May 17 Featured Investigation: Fossil fuels may foul the air, but renewables pollute the ground. James Varney reports for RealClearInvestigations that when solar panels and wind turbines reach the end of their life cycles, about 90% of the ensuing waste is now winding up in landfills – and the promised push to recycle the material is littered with obstacles. - Solar panels generally have a life expectancy of 25 years, but factors like damage and system upgrades make the number of panels coming out of circulation each year impossible to ascertain.
- Just how many panels the U.S. will dispose of or retire each year is unclear. No clearing house keeps track of national figures. In 2021, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimated that between 3,000 and 6,000 solar panels would be retired annually through 2026.
- Waste from renewables will grow exponentially in the next few decades as the 500 million solar panels and the 73,000 wind turbines now operating in the U.S. are decommissioned and replaced by even more installations.
- At root, there isn’t much in solar panels worth recycling. There are tiny amounts of silver and copper, along with some silicon, but those wafers are deep within a compressed sandwich of glass and other elements. Crushed glass has some limited value in construction, but extracting the small amounts of valuable components is an intensive, high-tech process.
- Changing this reality may be difficult because the recycling industry as a whole has never been dynamic. Indeed, the last few years have seen widespread evidence that the solar industry that the recycling revolution that has led Americans to separate their trash into various categories has been a bust.
- In the headlong effort to make solar and wind seem as inexpensive as possible, renewable energy advocates have not included fees that address the eventual cost of disposal, which could leave taxpayers holding the bag. The question of who will pay to dismantle the panels, transport them to landfills or recycling centers, or even, in some cases, ship them abroad has been left unanswered in most states. Some state legislatures, like Louisiana’s, are moving to address that vacuum and prevent taxpayers from being stuck with the cleanup bill.
Featured Investigation: Unbridled: How Massive Pentagon Spending Happens by Design Pentagon spending would seem to be a ripe target for cuts in the age of DOGE. But, Bob Ivry and Jeremy Portnoy report for RealClearInvestigations, U.S. law and political influence make it difficult to claw back savings from the world’s most expensive military. - While President Trump is seeking to push annual defense spending to over $1 trillion, his request is almost certain to rise because the Pentagon is required to ask Congress for even more money.
- The chief of staff of each military branch must put together an unfunded priority list requesting money for items not included in the president’s budget.
- These wish lists totaled at least $30.8 billion in fiscal year 2025, $17 billion in 2024, and $21.5 billion in 2023. Past requests have included $6.8 million for an Air Force dog kennel; $10.2 million for a “high altitude balloon,” and $22.5 million for “mobile kitchen trailers”
- The practice persists despite Defense Department complaints that they obscure spending priorities.
- The Pentagon budget is also swollen by “Congressional increases” – de facto earmarks for programs neither the president nor Pentagon officials thought were important enough to include even in their dream spending plans. Congressional increases added at least $22.7 billion to the military budget in FY 2024.
- The military often pays premium prices. Soon after John Phelan was sworn in as Secretary of the Navy in March, he reviewed the bill for a new set of barracks to house his sailors. Phelan, a longtime investment executive without military experience, notes that one set of barracks cost $2.5 million a key (per room). “My old firm, we built the finest hotel in Hawaii for $800,000 a key,” Phelan said, “and that has some pretty nice marble and some pretty nice things in it, and I’m trying to understand how we can get to those numbers.”
- Despite the spending, the government reports that “shortages in trained maintenance personnel” are compromising the ability of the Army, Navy, and Air Force to meet mission-capable goals for many aircraft.
Waste of the Day by Jeremy Portnoy, Open the Books Trump 2.0 and the Beltway Auction to Dine with Trump Raises Concerns, New York Times GOP Bill Would Derail Green Energy Boom, New York Times From Trillions to Billions: Why DOGE Failed, Reason The Actual Math Behind DOGE’s Cuts, Atlantic GOP Push to Sell Public Lands in the West Reignites Political Fight, AP No One Knows Who’s Running Trump’s Dramatic Space Policy, Politico Voters Claim Musk Reneged on Promised $100 Payment, The Hill Dem Megadonor Accused of Sexual Harassment, Washington Free Beacon Other Noteworthy Articles and Series Reuters Rogue communication devices that could allow control of key infrastructure from afar have been found in power inverters and other Chinese-made green energy equipment sold around the world, this article reports. Power inverters, which are predominantly produced in China, are used throughout the world to connect solar panels and wind turbines to electricity grids. They are also found in batteries, heat pumps and electric vehicle chargers. … Over the past nine months, undocumented communication devices, including cellular radios, have also been found in some batteries from multiple Chinese suppliers, one of them said. This article reports that the devices could be used to skirt firewalls and switch off inverters remotely, or change their settings, destabilizing power grids, damage energy infrastructure, and trigger widespread blackouts, experts said. Wall Street Journal Criminal networks largely made up of Chinese nationals living in the U.S. are laundering money for Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel at American banks, this article reports. Chinese operatives open accounts at multiple banks, using counterfeit passports to disguise their identity. They charge traffickers 1% to 2% on the dollar, undercutting competitors. [One California] network allegedly handled some $50 million in proceeds from drug trafficking over four years, depositing a portion of the tainted cash at ATMs and teller windows at major banks including Citibank in cities around Los Angeles County, according to federal prosecutors. Similar money-laundering operations operate in plain sight around the U.S., hiding the staggering returns which are the sole reason cross-border cartels smuggle the fentanyl, methamphetamine, cocaine and other illegal drugs consumed by millions of Americans, according to current and former law-enforcement officials and court records. This article reports that North Carolina prosecutors “filed money-laundering charges against a Chinese network that used shell companies to make cash deposits totaling at least $92 million between May 2022 and April 2024 at banks including Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo. In one five-month period, the network’s money couriers made more than 100 deposits at bank branches in 20 states, using accounts created in the name of a sham company. None of the banks cited in these cases has been accused of wrongdoing.” Politico A growing number of remote tech workers hired by many of America’s top tech firms turn out to be North Korean cyber-operatives. A chief goal, this article reports, is to earn high salaries that they can funnel back to their government to help pay for its weapons programs (which, Reuters reports, are now a mainstay of Russia’s efforts against Ukraine). As these operatives evolve their methods using sophisticated AI tools and American accomplices, new hubs for these scams continue to pop up across the U.S., to the frustration of chief information security officers and tech executives throughout the corporate world. … According to experts, the plot tends to follow a similar playbook: A North Korean operative will create a fake LinkedIn profile posing as an American job seeker, often using stolen information such as addresses and Social Security numbers from a real person. They will often apply for high-paying jobs en masse or get in touch with recruiters using a fake identity. Once they make it to the interview stage, they will use AI-generated deepfakes to look and sound like the person they are attempting to impersonate, often in real time. … After being hired, these North Korean operatives will use stolen credentials to cruise through the onboarding process and ask employers to send their work laptops to front addresses in the U.S. – which are often laptop “farms” with dozens of devices kept running by a few American individuals who are paid to join the scheme. “In some cases, they have 90 of these laptops set up, and they’re just plugging them in, keeping them powered on,” said Adam Meyers, senior vice president of counter-adversary operations at cybersecurity company CrowdStrike. Wall Street Journal As RealClearInvestigations reported last year, several school districts around the country have been embracing an approach called “Grading for Equity,” which includes “the removal of behavior in calculating grades, the end of penalties for late assignments, allowing students to retake exams, and a ban on zeroes as the lowest mark.” This article reports that the strategy pioneered by teacher-turned-consultant Joe Feldman as a way to help disadvantaged students is facing some pushback. When Jake Johnson, a high-school math teacher in Rochester, Minn., learned about equitable grading several years ago, he was eager to give it a shot. He quickly ran into practical challenges. When students realized they could retake tests as often as they wanted, they began putting off studying, Johnson said. As the year went on, students fell behind. Rochester made equitable grading mandatory for all teachers in 2020. Many came to resent it, Johnson and others said. Teachers had to grade and regrade assignments, and even create new work for students to retake.“It was really toxic. It was really bad for student learning,” Johnson said. This article reports that Ethan Hutt, a University of North Carolina professor who wrote a book on grading, said there is no firm evidence that grading for equity is better than traditional methods and schools should be wary of imposing it on everyone. Hutt “questions Feldman’s claim that traditional grading fails to motivate students. Hutt points to studies showing that students tend to learn more with teachers who are tougher graders.” New York Times Echoing Joel Kotkin’s two-part series for RealClearInvestigations detailing California’s mounting problems, this article reports that the once Golden State is entering one of the most difficult periods in its history as it confronts what many leaders and officials say is an unprecedented confluence of forces – economic, political, social, environmental – that is testing its long record of resilience in the face of catastrophe, natural and otherwise. Many young people are moving to other states to escape a housing shortage, leaving behind an aging population in a state that has long been a symbol of youth and energy. Los Angeles, an economic engine for the state, is grappling with a $1 billion budget shortfall even before it confronts the challenge of rebuilding from the fires and the potential economic drain of preparing for the Olympics. Like San Francisco, it is struggling with an epidemic of homelessness on its sidewalks and downtown business districts that have been hollowed out by the Covid pandemic. And at a time when the state is more vulnerable and more desperate for federal assistance after the fires, it seems unlikely California can look to Washington for help. President Trump has been far more antagonistic toward the state than he was in his first term. |
