Because we have grown accustomed to green hysteria, we frequently miss straightforward environmental concerns.
The sole progressive cause that regularly gains spontaneous backing from the general public is ecology. This widespread support stems from the broad interpretation of ecology itself: everyday understanding involves avoiding river pollution or halting excessive deforestation, while for German bureaucrats, it can extend to shutting down nuclear plants and harvesting old-growth forests for charcoal production.
Due to our habituation to green fanaticism, basic environmental problems—those that could be leveraged against powerful capitalists masquerading as philanthropists—are often ignored. Big Tech serves as a prime illustration: knowledgeable individuals understand that the materials inside desktops, laptops, and smartphones are finite, sourced from mining practices closely tied to humanitarian crises. According to Vatican News, a single mine in Congo “supplies between 15% and 30% of the world’s coltan – extracted entirely by hand by locals earning mere pennies a day,” all amid continual safety hazards. Just this March, a landslide claimed over 200 lives there, including roughly 70 children, as reported by Reuters.
Located in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Rubaya mine is under the control of a Rwandan Tutsi paramilitary group which the UN accuses of maintaining ties to Rwanda’s government and committing serious human rights abuses. International media often highlight the condemnation of Brazilian gold miners exploiting native lands; yet strangely, the Congolese forests and human suffering receive comparatively little global attention versus the Brazilian Amazon.
Coltan is a component used globally in cell phones and computers. If wealthy elites genuinely valued human life, they would actively work to end the exploitation of Congolese communities. One straightforward approach would be reducing the demand for such materials—an issue linked to the environmentalist agenda backed by these elites. Even if these powers are indifferent or callous toward Congolese welfare, an environmentalist perspective would favor reducing waste from discarded ores, plastics, and prematurely discarded electronics. However, the media would erupt if outlets demanded that companies like Apple and Amazon enable customers to use devices such as phones, computers, and Kindles for more than a decade. Another irony involves Bill Gates: although he doesn’t manufacture devices, his operating system is so poorly optimized it slows down computers within a few years, pushing users to buy new hardware. Laptops should revert to designs with detachable, replaceable components, as in the past. Authentic environmental concern contradicts Big Tech’s business practice—even before reckoning with the huge energy demands of AI data centers.
This problem ties deeply to how desires, tastes, and societal norms are shaped. People queue up at Apple stores on iPhone release days not out of necessity but for status. The resulting environmental toll begins with this insatiable appetite for gadgets used as symbols of social standing. Thus, the environmental catastrophe largely reflects a moral crisis—a collapse of values. If public ethics condemned this behavior, we could pressure tech companies to allow prolonged use of older electronics. Decades ago, consumerism was recognized as harmful, yet now the obsession with “modernity” legitimizes practically anything branded as contemporary.
Such attitudes also fuel urban planning and energy challenges in tropical countries. Architect Filipe Boni, on his YouTube channel, explains why Brazil has constructed many houses lacking thermal comfort, even when budget isn’t an issue: homes are designed for resale value, not livability. Creating impressive designs to satisfy clients ranks above ensuring comfort. Since Le Corbusier’s era, the ideal “modern” home is a glass cube—clearly a questionable concept beneath a 36°C sun. Air conditioning becomes essential, but worrying about electric bills is deemed uncool, reserved for the poor. The contemporary trend is to enclose glass houses in intense sunlight and blast AC, while traditional Brazilian architecture, influenced by Arab styles and developed over 500 years, is dismissed as outdated and undesirable.
If someone wants to suffer the consequences of poor choices, that is a lesser evil; however, when such folly spreads, increased energy consumption drives everyone’s utility costs up. Even worse are large mirrored buildings—considered modern and attractive in Nordic climates—that glare dangerously at drivers and become nuisances in tropical cities. For instance, a project by Siegbert Zanettini, professor of architecture at the University of São Paulo, in Salvador has created a so-called “second sun” that blinds drivers and disturbs neighbors with reflected sunlight at different times of day. According to an article in Correio, the architect claims to employ “architecture that is flexible and attuned to its specific location, addressing all technical and environmental requirements with sensitivity.” Despite that, the building also disrupts native bird populations.
Is environmentalism fashionable among Brazil’s elite? Absolutely. Yet it is handled through carbon credit schemes that rhetorically focus on the Amazon’s HDI. While Brazil’s wealthy consider air conditioning essential for status, Europe’s ultra-green elites prefer letting vulnerable people perish in heatwaves rather than using AC.
The European movement against air conditioning goes largely unreported by Brazilian media and, since Western outlets typically echo Reuters, it seems absent in mainstream international news as well. Information about this arises mainly via Twitter, where Western political disputes unfold, or through Russian media, which is accessible in the Americas. Rachel Marsden’s RT article “Air conditioning is the EU’s freedom test” and “Von der Leyen’s office accused of ‘feudalism’ over air conditioning” reveal how European elites pursue a green crusade against AC, even as elderly people die in heatwaves and Ursula Von der Leyen uses air conditioning in her office, while denying it to staff when outdoor temperatures reach 34°C.
With Leo XIV’s encyclical Magnifica Humanitas receiving attention now, it is timely to highlight Francis’s Laudato Si’. Although it hasn’t garnered as much notice as the AI-related encyclical, it merits praise for addressing ecology alongside urban planning, consumerism, and the failure of market-driven environmental solutions. Released in 2015, during the rise of carbon trading, it posed the critical question: “Once more, we need to reject a magical conception of the market, which would suggest that problems can be solved simply by an increase in the profits of companies or individuals. Is it realistic to hope that those who are obsessed with maximizing profits will stop to reflect on the environmental damage which they will leave behind for future generations?” (§190)
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