by Edward Ring
Green mandates aren’t saving the planet—they’re building a tech-driven surveillance state where appliances cost more, work worse, and train Americans to accept control as virtue.
Imagine life in a California suburb in 2035. It’s a Monday morning, and trash cans have been wheeled to the curb for pickup. But not so fast!
Ahead of the garbage truck, now a mostly autonomous vehicle but still carrying a human overseer, there are garbage-sniffing drones. As they hover over still unemptied garbage cans, mechanical tentacles descend, opening the lid. A separate tentacle, packed with sensors, pokes into the garbage. If “organic” material is detected in the trash bin, an enforcement division is alerted, and a citation is issued.
Okay, instead of airborne drones, maybe the garbage truck itself will be equipped with sensors and appendages on the mechanical arm that lifts the containers to pour the waste into the truck. One way or another, high technology is going to make sure citizens get those kitchen scraps in the right container.
This is a future in which environmentalist zealots and their opportunistic corporate allies continue to dominate public policy, and it is merely an extension of what’s already happening. When it comes to employing technology to modify human behavior, the future is already here.
If you’re wondering why Silicon Valley titans continue to do business in California, it’s not just the good weather and great scenery. It’s because California is home to the most extreme and most powerful environmentalist political machine on earth. This machine has convinced an overwhelming percentage of the state’s voters that anything goes if the objective is to save the earth.
There is a common thread in every over-engineered appliance that’s become the only option for consumers in California and, increasingly, everywhere else in America.
Technology. Chips. Software. Internet connectivity. The selling points are features you suddenly can’t live without, along with the overwrought moral imperative to save energy and water. The underlying motivation is more profit and more control. But do we need all these features?
It’s becoming ridiculous. The latest refrigerator manufactured by Samsung doesn’t just chill your perishables. It’s a “Family Hub.” The exterior of this machine includes a high-resolution touchscreen, internet connectivity, speakers, microphones, cameras, proximity sensors, and integration with smart home “ecosystems.” Inside, there are cameras for food recognition.
In case you’re wondering, yes, your Samsung Family Hub refrigerator will talk with you and your family, so you can command it to play music or videos, answer phone calls, create shopping lists, and control other smart home devices.
Most of this has already been around for several years. Samsung introduced the talking refrigerator in 2018. Piling the capacities of AI onto appliances already saturated with integrated circuits will only accelerate the process toward households filled with devices performing tasks nobody ever imagined they’d ever need. Meanwhile, these marvels of technology have become less able to perform the tasks for which they were originally designed.
The washing machine is a perfect example of how chips and climate change alarm have ruined what was a durable product in a mature industry. In the name of saving electricity and saving water, the environmentalist industrial complex couldn’t save just a little electricity and a little water. Instead, they mandated a product that used almost no water. And to save electricity, they turned the control panel on the washing machine into something resembling the bridge of a starship, with so many options that you have to study a detailed manual just to figure out how to turn on the device.
These new washing machines are front-loading instead of top-loading, because that will save a few gallons of water, but your clothes flop around inside a drum that’s on a horizontal axis. Clothes get damaged, and they don’t get very clean, and you have to get onto your knees on the floor to load and unload them. Some especially over-engineered washing machines are top-loading, and then once the lid is shut, the drum rotates 90 degrees to establish that water sipping horizontal axis. This, of course, adds to the price and introduces yet another set of components that wear out.
Since when was it in the interest of consumers to use washing machines that are confusing to operate, difficult to load and unload, do a poor job washing clothes, damage fabrics, take an hour or more to complete what ought to be a 20 minute cycle, break down every few months, can’t possibly be repaired at home by their owners, and inflict lifetime costs many times what washing machines used to cost? Before today’s coalition of environmentalists and technology companies got out of control, washing machines were built to last. Not for three years, or even 10 years, but for 30 years or more.
Environmental mandates have made appliances in America more expensive, less durable, and less effective. A study that exposes how federal appliance efficiency standards have attacked the consumer by limiting product choices and raising product costs was published last month by Ben Lieberman of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. One of Lieberman’s main points is that every time the U.S. Congress was controlled by the environmentalist industrial complex, appliance regulations were added, whereas in the years when reform might have occurred, all that ever happened was a pause. Federal appliance standards over the decades were akin to a ratchet. They would advance, stop, then advance again, but never get rolled back.
In his study, “Free the Appliances,” here are Lieberman’s observations regarding washing machines: “Washing machine standards have led to cleaning performance and reliability problems that were never anticipated by the agency and have not been acknowledged since. They have also led to the accumulation of foul-smelling mold in many machines, necessitating a new market in products designed to eliminate the smell. The need to occasionally wash the washing machine by running it empty with these special cleaners is not only an inconvenience, but also undercuts the agency’s claimed energy and water savings. The same is true of the increased need to run loads more than once due to diminished cleaning performance.”
A similar litany of negative consequences, both unintentional and deliberate, can be recited for literally everything that consumes energy or water: furnaces and air conditioners, water heaters, dishwashers, faucets, shower heads, lighting, ovens, stoves, microwaves, washers, dryers, and refrigerators.
When considering the environmentalist assault on households, the obvious observation is how their policies have raised the cost of energy and water. The same principles are at work. Enforce mandates that limit opportunities for competition or innovation. Subsidize “renewable” energy while trying to regulate and litigate cheap conventional energy into oblivion. Prevent practical water supply management and investment in practical new water supply infrastructure while enforcing expensive water rationing. In all cases, this increased costs to households.
Less obvious, but more costly, is the environmentalist assault on the appliances that utilize energy and water in the household. They cost more, yet break down or become obsolete much sooner. They do more—example: talking refrigerators—but perform their core mission poorly—example: washing machines. And all these ultra-smart appliances are part of a bigger, ultimate mission, which is to exercise total surveillance and micromanagement of everything we do.
This is where the merging of the technology industry and the environmentalist movement becomes most alarming. Extreme environmentalists believe a middle-class lifestyle is unsustainable. Technology companies want to sell more technology. Unchecked, the natural synergy between these two motivations moves us toward a tech-enabled green totalitarianism. It could pervade literally everything we do. Here’s another completely plausible scenario.
It’s 2035, and your refrigerator tells you your broccoli is going to spoil in 24 hours and must be consumed. Until you have eaten it, your digital currency will not be enabled to purchase more. The cameras on your refrigerator’s “family hub” exterior will watch diligently to ensure you eat your broccoli. Don’t put it down the garbage disposal, nor into the correct waste container. The refrigerator will know.
Crazy? I think not. Pick your permutation, but applications of this general concept are just around the corner. The premise of the environmentalists is simple: any waste, any inefficiency whatsoever, results in additional carbon emissions, and therefore, inefficiency must be eliminated. Whatever absurdities, including new inefficiencies introduced by the mandates supposedly designed to increase efficiency, are ignored in the pursuit of profit. The irony is enormous.
Robots are here. If the environmentalist industrial complex is not broken, robots will enforce strict limits on the indulgences of biological humans, as the resources of the world are instead redirected into their functioning. This constitutes utopia for the zealots but is a dystopian prison for the rest of us.
There is a glorious, liberating alternative. Set realistic environmentalist goals. Defy and discard the climate alarmist narrative that has corrupted the commercial priorities of all industries. Technology is a river. Changing the incentives will change the flow. Robots and AI can make our lives easier instead of more complicated and more expensive. Instead of Terminator, think Jetsons.
Edward Ring
Source: https://amgreatness.com/2026/01/21/the-green-robotic-utopia-is-here/
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