'World News' Shows How Environmental Regulations Backfire
Call it a preview of what could happen when the U.S. government steps in to regulate where carbon emissions by making it too expensive to burn fossil fuels – they’ll be exported overseas and burned anyway, negating the perceived benefit.
A July 30 segment on ABC’s “World News with Charles Gibson” showed what happens to so-called e-waste, that is, old computers and televisions. In fact, they’re shipped overseas.
“Back overseas, we were surprised to learn many of the old computers and televisions in the
According to the segment, a lot of electronic waste winds up in
“Sometimes they set fire to computers in order to extract the copper wiring to sell, which unleashes a toxic soup of chemicals,” ABC correspondent Ron Claiborne said.
According to Claiborne other countries don’t allow their e-waste to be exported in accordance to terms a treaty. But he showed even
“For almost every country in the world, it is illegal to send this kind of electronic waste to another country, but not the
Why could companies pay the steep cost of shipping this material overseas? Because trying to dispose of it domestically is too costly thanks to strict
“Recyclers ship this kind of waste overseas because the
However, if the
