Due Diligence

🇪🇺🇺🇸 I support the new EU legislation to address human rights breaches and labor rights. My friends and I intend to revolutionize the textile industry with new sustainable biomaterials and our factories will be based in the USA and Italy where human rights abuses are illegal and do not occur. These new laws will make it easier for us to grow our business. But why is this legislation focused only on the fashion industry supply chains? Does the EU intend to declare that the same rules should apply to all industries, including the renewable energy industry?

The reason I ask is that most solar panels are being made in China by slave labor in Xinjiang, and none of our current world leaders are doing much about it. In fact we keep hearing promises from the EU, US and G7 that they will responsibly source the critical minerals required for clean energy technologies, but they continue to import Chinese solar panels made with slave labor and with critical minerals sourced irresponsibly by China.

In fact, the Biden Administration created a loophole for businesses to get around the legislation passed by the US Congress that banned solar panels made in Xinjiang, because the Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico senators - all Democrats - protested the law. The Biden Administration is now pushing subsidies for clean energy technologies with the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) before they have even put together a strategy for responsibly sourcing the critical minerals needed to make those clean energy technologies. This makes us feel as though we are being lied to, and they have no real intention of being responsible at all. Rather than promises to be responsible, we want legislation that guarantees it. That legislation should have come before or along with the IRA subsidies, not after.

The Biden Administration thinks they can get away with being irresponsible and importing solar panels made in China with slave labor, because the opposition - the GOP - wastes all of their time opposing clean energy technologies and pretending like climate change does not exist, rather than ensuring that the renewable energy industry is responsibly sourced. There is no acceptable excuse for the lack of legislation on critical minerals and responsible supply chains for clean energy technologies. All of these measures to responsibly source new energy technologies and protect our energy independence should have been included in the so-called new green deal.

Will the EU create legislation the guarantees that clean energy technologies are responsibly sourced?

xo

Response to: https://www.politico.eu/article/fashion-real-victims-ten-years-rana-plaza-eu-scramble-prevent-future-tragedy/