Yes, you are a millennial, and yes you want to save the Earth from the destruction of all those before you. Clearly with the catastrophic events piling up one after the other, it is hard to ignore Global Warming and idiocracy that is the mind set of all the super politicians with money in their pockets.
I know this will give me a lot of backlash and many will try and denounce what I am about to say, but take a look at both sides of the story first.
Lab grown diamonds are much more efficient way in creating the beautiful gemstone that takes hundreds of thousands of years to be formed in the Earth. Yes two weeks definitely beats that time frame, but at what cost exactly?
There are many companies now claiming that lab created diamonds are more “ethical” and “sustainable” and more “green”, but how many of those claims are actually true?
Let’s take a look into how lab created diamonds (CVD – Chemical Vapor Deposition) are being formed first. Lab created diamonds are true diamonds, do not get that wrong, but they are not naturally created.
It is exactly the type of creation that the Matrix explains with Neo being reborn in a machine world where babies are farmed and grown rather than occurring naturally.
First they take a potential seed, a small microscopic diamond piece or carbon piece that has the qualifications for the process. Then they place it in this giant machine that is completely vacuum sealed. Once they are able to place the particle of diamond on a substrate plate, a plasma laser is fired into the chamber. The added hydrogen and water vapors in the chamber then separate the H2 molecules and O molecules. The oxygen molecules are removed from the chamber and the hydrogen bond converts to a diamond bond. This bond now rains down and attaches itself to the diamond or carbon piece that was originally placed on the substrate plate. As the diamond rain falls on the diamond piece, it slowly builds and creates a new synthetically grown diamond in the chamber. The longer you keep the piece in the chamber and the more water vapor added to the chamber will create a bigger carat of rough CVD Diamond. It cannot be kept indefinitely at the risk of the plasma laser destroying the chamber, but the limit keeps growing with newer technology.
Now this way of creating a diamond takes up a gross amount of energy. The amount of power needed to fire a plasma laser for such a long period of time, let alone holding these elements in this vacuum, expends so much electricity and force that it is actually not “green” at all. This amount of energy is being pulled to power these machines are burning more coal and gasoline and releasing more green house gases than it would take to actually mine these precious and rare gems from the Earth. The amount of people and systems that Earth mining of these diamonds are supporting are absolutely amazing. Also, with the new machines and technology of drilling, they are able to do the less amounts of destruction as that which was done before. Please do not get me wrong, both ways are harming Mother Nature, but what troubles me, is that lab created diamonds are claiming to be more helpful, wherein-fact they are doing more harm than good.
These companies even have our favorite Earth ambassador, Leonardo Dicaprio, endorsing the industry. There are a few companies that are claiming to be running their systems on 100% solar power, which if true, would be the only companies that are actually working towards making a difference and not causing a release of these greenhouse gases and draining more power. Though, this process would then take a much longer time and also cause the prices of production to go much higher.
There is an amazing documentary that I would encourage of all of you to view. The link to the trailer is here: https://vimeo.com/130801678
The title – Sharing the Rough
It does not cover diamonds specifically, but does give great insight into the gem mining industry and the amount of economies that this supports.
The CVD and lab grown industry is definitely new and exciting, but not as kosher as most make it to be.
