Guest essay by Eric Worrall
People who actually care about animals and trees are finally pushing back and winning, against the wholesale wilderness destruction renewable energy supporters are attempting to inflict on green spaces.
Tension and trade-offs between protecting biodiversity and avoiding climate change
BY CHRIS DUNN, PH.D., AND MORGAN BAZILIAN, PH.D., OPINION CONTRIBUTORS — 02/20/22 11:30 AM EST
THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILLLand just upstream of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Minnesota was leased for copper mining — until the plan was recently scrapped.
This mine would have provided a domestic source of minerals crucial for decarbonizing the economy and mitigating climate change, but at great expense — offering a preview of the difficult decisions that lie ahead.
The development of these leases would likely have been a disaster for the wilderness: the odds are high that the sulfide-ore mining would eventually result in acid mine drainage and the leaching of toxic metals into protected waterways on which a diversity of life depends, in an area with a substantial and established recreation economy.
…
To combat climate change, we need such minerals — a lot of them — and quickly.
Take for example, that electric vehicles (EVs) use 10 times more copper than internal combustion vehicles — 183 pounds versus 18-49 pounds. And a 2020 study predicted increased demand “for materials between 2015 and 2060 of 87,000% for EV batteries, 1000% for wind power, and 3000% for solar cells and photovoltaics.” Another study notes that “mineral demand for use in EVs and battery storage is a major force, growing at least thirty times to 2040. Lithium sees the fastest growth, with demand growing by over 40 times…followed by graphite, cobalt and nickel (around 20-25 times).”
All of this reflects a growing conflict between competing — though ultimately connected — environmental concerns. On the one hand, large, open-pit mines are a destructive force on the landscape and a substantial threat to wilderness and waters. On the other, the resources they provide are integral to mitigating climate change.
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Read more: https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/595009-the-collision-of-wilderness-protection-and-avoiding-climate
This push back has been a long time coming.
Some of the bigger conservation societies appear to support the destruction of nature, they claim it is necessary to serve a higher cause.
Wind Power and Birds
Properly sited wind power can help protect birds from climate change.
By National Audubon Society
July 21, 2020Audubon strongly supports wind energy that is sited and operated properly to avoid, minimize, and mitigate effectively for the impacts on birds, other wildlife, and the places they need now and in the future. To that end, we support the development of wind energy to achieve 100% clean electricity.
Wind power is an important source of renewable, carbon-free energy that is critical to replacing and reducing emissions from fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas that cause warming of our planet.
All forms of energy—including wind power—have impacts on birds. Audubon’s role is to make sure that key species and high conservation areas for birds are protected as much as possible and in accordance with federal law. We engage in advocacy on federal, state, and local energy planning processes, and on individual utility-scale projects. Audubon also weighs in on federal permitting policies for species protected by the Endangered Species Act, the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act, and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.
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Read more: https://www.audubon.org/news/wind-power-and-birds
This bird society qualified support for bird choppers is particularly disgusting, given the amount of online footage we’ve all seen of birds being smashed from the sky by wind turbines, or incinerated by solar concentrators.
The pushback mostly appears to be coming from local groups, rather than big high profile international groups.
Large green organisations like the Audubon Society might be able to kid themselves they are taking a birds eye view of the situation, fool themselves and their members into believing that substantial destruction of wilderness is necessary to preserve the rest.
Local organisations whose members have dedicated their lives to protecting one particular stand of trees or one wetland, are not so philosophical when someone comes along and threatens their patch. They leap into action, and implement a well rehearsed protection plan, even if the new threat comes from fellow greens.
Frankly I hope the local groups win this battle. There is no good reason to ruin vast stretches of wilderness in the service of the green energy fantasy, even if you think CO2 is a problem.
There are better alternatives to renewable energy.
Zero carbon nuclear power is no threat to the wilderness. Nuclear plants have a tiny footprint compared to renewables, acres rather than square miles.
Worst case, even if there is another meltdown, look at the consequences for the wilderness in places where meltdowns have already happened. The areas around Chernobyl and Fukushima are now unrivalled animal habitats, places most humans dare not disturb. What normal national park has that level of protection?
Compare what happened in Chernobyl and Fukushima, to a horrific vision of solar panels and wind turbines sitting on a bed of concrete, stretching as far as the eye can see, with barely a plant or animal in sight. Man made deserts of silicon panels, glass and concrete. Because that is what would be required to even attempt to satisfy global energy demand using renewables.
Actually you don’t have to imagine – it is already happening in China. Yet even with man made renewable energy deserts like the photo below, China still generates most of its power from coal.
How much more green space destruction would be required, for China to go 100% renewable? For the world to go 100% renewable?
I’m not a fan of nuclear meltdowns, and I’m not mocking the very real harm the meltdowns did to people and nature. But even the very worst harm the nuclear industry has done to nature, does not come close to what would happen if the world seriously attempted to hit Net Zero using renewable energy.
Now that local wilderness groups have finally found their voice, in my opinion the renewable energy revolution is stuffed, at least in the West.
Only wholesale destruction of pretty much the entire wilderness could have supplied the vast mineral resources and land area renewable energy requires. Local conservation groups have finally decided to reject the destruction of everything they care about, even if the agents of destruction claim they want to save the world with green energy.
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I doubt there are a lot of rural folk pushing to see this. Those who want all these wind and solar farms probably all live in cities. This doesn’t bother them because it’s what’s already all around them.
Well, of course, they live in cities.They think food and clothing come from the store. They have no idea how such things really work. Ever wonder how much they’d like sweet Bell peppers if they had to spend hours harvesting those beauties in the pepper fields? Or cabbage? Tomatoes? Carrots?
I don’t know about them, but I LOVE my peppers, tomatoes, etc that I spend hours harvesting 🙂
Better appreciation of them along with they’re just better
That’s exactly my point, Tony. You do the work. They don’t.
” Green Civil War ”
Good news! I like that!
Really, as a product of a constantly changing 20th century – regarding appliances of all sorts, including ice boxes (um, what are those/) — I’m just gobsmacked at the quarreling over what’s more damaging to This or That, because your arguments don’t make any sense.
Aside from the few Geezers like me, who grew up with a fireplace that stood in for the furnace when the power went out every winter – you could count on that happening – and having to cook on a gas-fired stovetop with a gas-fired oven, both of which had to be lit with kitchen matches, I do wonder how many people squabbling here over bird kills and nuclear this ‘n’ that — just how many of you have had to spend a major portion of your winter days trying to keep warm by the fireplace or sitting near the big, black cast-iron gas stove in the kitchen, JUST TO KEEP WARM, when the power went out and the power company literally took days to get the power back on.
I sometimes think my Dad enjoyed it because he grew up without any central heating at all, so I’m sure his memories of rotten cold winter days with deep snows and boots that leaked because the leather was rotten, were ameliorated by central heating and a self-igniting stovetop. We DID have an ice box, which had a compartment for a block of ice, and the other side was for keeping food cold. REAL MODERN STUFF, y’know. Would you like to know how fast milk can go sour when it isn’t cold enough?
You’re all squabbling over windmills, like Don Quixote on his quest to slay Giants, when the real issue is not the windmills but the damage they do. Windmills were originally used to grind hard grains into flour, in case you didn’t know that. The sails in the windmills caught the wind and turned the cogs that turned the grindstone to grind grain. Of course, back in them there Olden Times, there was no electricity, so the windmills – MILLS driven by WIND – served a useful purpose, but now? When they were used for pumping water troughs full for cattle a sheep or for grinding grain into flour, they served a real purpose but they did NOT kill off birds. Is that clear?????
They’re mostly junk. They break down easily, kill off useful predator birds, set themselves on fire, take up thousands of acres of good farmland that could be used to produce grain crops, and in the end, are nothing but useless junk. Definitely not worth the damage they cause to wildlife, and certainly THE ugliest things I’ve seen in a long time.
Oh, and when the power goes out in my AO, which happens at least once a year around here and frequently in the winter or the HEAT of summer, none of the appliances work, but there’s still pressure in the gas line to the stove so that means I can actually still cook as long as I have matches to light the stove burners. Can’t use the oven, though – thermostat doesn’t work without electricity. And when it gets dark, I’m just glad I have my great-granny’s oil lamps!
I might as well be living in a log cabin some place where I don’t have to put up with ecohippies and greenbeaner tramps, but they’re afraid to leave the cities they live in. They might get cold, y’know, and not find any food wrapped in cellophane.
In case you missed the POINT to the article, ti was about the destruction of the environment by solar and wind farms, the tolls they take o wildlife – especially useful critters – and how they not only don’t hold up under real use (my nephew in Texas can attest to that) but are completely unreliable. PERIOD!!!!
If you want reliable electric power, you’ll have to suck it up and go back to nuclear reactors and or coal-fired power generators, and deal with that like grownups.
And if you think China is NOT doing that, you are kidding yourselves. Ditto Russia. They don’t have a bunch of twits squabbling over what to build to produce electricity, because neither Putin nor Xi Jinping gives a flying fox bat in space what the ecohippies and greenbeaners think, and they never will.
Kinda long, Eric. Sorry about that!
Sara, your comment really just amounts to the same tired old Denier and fossil fuel tropes that have been steadily debunked for the past 20 years. Wind and solar are cleaner and cheaper BY FAR than thermal generation options, and improving in both metrics almost weekly. This is why they’re being deployed faster than any other sources of electricity in history. Yes, in history. I’d suggest you step out of old energy echo chambers like WUWT and simply look around. The dominance of renewables is inevitable.
This is wonderful news about how cheap wind and solar power is. This means that all subsidies for wind and solar can be cancelled with immediate effect.
>>This means that all subsidies for wind and solar can be cancelled with immediate effect.<< It’s always good for laughs when fossil fuel shills pretend their gravy train isn’t pulling down trillions in subsidies around the world each year. https://e360.yale.edu/digest/fossil-fuels-received-5-9-trillion-in-subsidies-in-2020-report-finds#:~:text=Fossil%20Fuels%20Received%20%245.9%20Trillion%20In%20Subsidies%20in%202020%2C%20Report%20Finds,-An%20open%2Dpit&text=Coal%2C%20oil%2C%20and%20natural%20gas,8%20percent%20of%20the%20total.
Confirmed: Repeating False Statements Over And Over Magically Makes Them True | The Babylon Bee
With all due respect, Barry, you seem to completely miss the damage done to the places where wind and solar farms are planted. Beneficial animals, such as predator birds, never mind the rest of the critter kingdom, are being killed off – PERIOD. THEY are necessary to a healthy environment.
Furthermore, there is more than ample evidence that when these “farms” begin to fail, they are left to rot and no one cleans them up. If you have valid evidence otherwise, please provide it.
I stand by what I said, as I grew up in farming country where windmills were used ON FARMS to pump water to livestock. Some of those old windmills are still around and they still work and cost the farmer nothing but minor repairs when needed. Mother Earth News published articles back in the 1970s supporting INDIVIDUAL PERSONAL USE of solar and wind power, but said bluntly that both are useless as commercial entities because they will do far more damage to the environment than any benefits. Both are UNRELIABLE as sources of electricity, which is repeatedly being proven when weather conditions block sunlight, or it’s night, the panels are damaged, AND wind farms are likewise unreliable.
Even Michael Moore found out the hard way that solar and wind farms trash the landscape when he went on a helicopter tour of those facilities. He was making a movie about the environment and was gobsmacked by the damage he saw. That was reported here on WUWT a short while ago.
What part of these things do you not understand?
And no, the so-called dominance of renewables is NOT inevitable.
Nuclear power for electricity is reliable, and has a long, long history of reliability. Wind and solar are NOT, and this is proven repeatedly.
Referring to me as a DENIER is a rather cheap shot, something I would expect of a grade-schooler.
I said specifically, more than once, that on an individual basis for the person who is willing to be the caretaker, they are useful, but NEITHER is completely reliable, and definitively NOT on a commercial scale. If that were not so, then why do they repeatedly fail when needed most, specifically in the WINTER???????
Nuclear power used to generate electricity is reliable, has been for decades. Wind and solar are NOT.
Almost forgot this part: solar energy has a capacity factor of a measly 24.9 percent, against Nuclear’s 92.5 percent.
Do you still think solar and wind are better, Barry??? Do you?
Again, Sara, all you’re doing is regurgitating the same tired old fossil fuel shill messaging that’s been long-since debunked. “Teh birdz are being killd!” rhetoric is just laughable posturing on the part of shills doing anything and everything they can to blunt the skyrocketing deployment of wind and solar. Again, every sane line of evidence and argument has proven over and over that bird kills by wind turbine are a drop in the bucket compared to other factors. And the fact that wind and solar are BY FAR less harmful to the environment than any thermal generation technology is well established. https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2018/04/risk-posed-to-birds-by-uk-wind-farms-has-been-exaggerated-new-study-indicates/?fbclid=IwAR14romxzE3gpgWOBj5btNBJVUBSXal3tG2RHH2gPXXdDsvAnKz_UJEMPZs
Just to be clear, the film you’re trying to refer to wasn’t Michael Moore’s movie, for one example. It was directed by Jeff Gibbs. And it was promptly ripped to shreds by not only experts in the field, but even Moore’s own fact-checkers. But it accomplished its primary purpose of spreading yet more misinformation for the uneducated to lap up without question. https://climatecrocks.com/2020/05/12/michael-me-just-went-boom/?fbclid=IwAR3lFRYfvYHfTBz70EG03OUOYYORlMRBchh_j7PNTks2GwUZPrsh3pSGZbQ
https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2020/06/what-planet-of-the-humans-gets-wrong-about-renewable-energy/?fbclid=IwAR1ZkAyh5-CNRo3DiripNh20MHWjH_K-clNve5WGFPg7Oi-f_CTcholspNA
Nuclear energy had its chance and blew it. It’s obsolete, takes FAR too long to build, it’s outrageously expensive, and generates lethal waste that STILL has no sustainable storage solution. Even France is cutting back their reliance on nuclear to increasingly embrace renewables.
“Increase the share of renewable energy sources to 23% and 32% of total energy consumption, respectively, in 2020 and 2030. Renewable energies must reach 40% of electricity generation by 2030.” https://cnpp.iaea.org/countryprofiles/France/France.htm
Again, Sara, stop getting your news and energy insights from well-documented shill sites and misinformation outlets like WUWT. This is just an echo chamber feeding confirmation bias. Stop letting them lie to you, Sara.
Obviously, you are referring to yourself, Barry. You are cranking your own tune.
Name ONE solar or wind field that can supply recreational fishing to people who like to fish. The LaSalle cooling ponds provide a good deal of entertainment for such people, in the form of EDIBLE FRESHWATER FISH, AS FOLLOWS:
https://fishbrain.com/fishing-waters/HA7tRt3o/lasalle-county-nuclear-station-cooling-pond
This is only ONE example. The nuke station near me that was deommed about 8 years ago had lake trout and salmon in the cooling ponds. I know people who used to fish there.
As I said, name ONE solar or wind farm that can do that. The only things I’ve seen coming out of those areas is trashed land, dead predators birds – I HAVE seen them myself – and destruction of useful land that can provide FOOD resources to the population.
I don’t get MY information from shill sites or “misinformtion” sites. I get it first hand, on my OWN recognizance.
>>Name ONE solar or wind field that can supply recreational fishing to people who like to fish.<< https://seagrant.gso.uri.edu/offshore-renewable-energy-improves-habitat-increases-fish/?fbclid=IwAR2eSefeVQ7Jc5Tbpzsbf3BkJCX0SBbpH8R9rHSrA-U9_P-Cnrfi7cXNDQE
>>and destruction of useful land that can provide FOOD resources to the population.<< Unlike a nuclear reactor, wind turbines don’t require a massive source of fresh water. Wind turbines can be installed on a wide range of sites. They can also be installed on family farms, where they’ve proven to be a valuable source of stable income. (Wind installation operators in fact paid out around $400 million to these farms last year.) Unlike nuclear reactors, which are limited to very, very few suitable sites in the US, wind turbines can be beneficially installed virtually anywhere the wind blows with regularity. There’s enough onshore wind potential alone to power the US grid 9 times over. The wind energy potential in Texas alone could power the US grid twice over. A wind farm the size of Delaware could easily power the entire US.
And then there’s solar. Solar PV also requires no access to fresh water, and in fact is ideal for operation in the hottest and most desolate lands on the planet. A solar PV installation covering 1.2% of the Sahara could power the entire world. Arizona deserts, Florida swamps, barren soil, superfund sites, landfill, abandoned strip mines, solar PV will do just fine in virtually any of them. And, in fact, solar energy has become so efficient and cost-effective there’s a legitimate consideration of draining some dam reservoirs and instead using the land for solar arrays. https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-are-tantalised-by-the-idea-of-replacing-hydropower-dams-with-solar-panels
Yeah, sport, you left out the part about toxic waste and the effect it has on people who go out collecting those pieces of trash from solar and wind turbine fields, because they DON’T get disposed of safely, BARRY and aren’t even being recycled.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2021/06/21/why-everything-they-said-about-solar—including-that-its-clean-and-cheap—was-wrong/?sh=745c3b3c5fe5
And if you say your electric bill hasn’t gone up, my response is “hogwash”, check your OLD power bills from 5 -10 years ago. Oh, that’s right: you probably throw them out. And you might explain why you think it’s okay for a swamp in Florida, which is a home to many necessary species of critters and very likely a wintering-over area for hundreds of thousands of birds – why it’s okay to trash that instead of leaving it alone.
Where’s your environmental concern about that, Barry??????
Here’s a nice photo of a solar field, just for you, Barry. Give it up. Your violin is cracking open.
https://www.americanexperiment.org/the-environmental-disaster-of-solar-energy/
>>And if you say your electric bill hasn’t gone up, my response is “hogwash”,<<
Hogwash?
Here are the four states in the US with the most wind power (over 35%), and their kWh cost:
Iowa: 8.97 (57% wind)
Kansas: 10.38 (43% wind)
Oklahoma: 7.63 (31% wind)
Texas: 8.36 (24% wind)
The US average is now 10.59. (And the recent spike in gas and coal prices are going to drive the US average up even more, to be sure.)
You were saying?
And lest Barry think that there is only ONE nuke plant in my state that offers fishing, the Braidwood power plant offers it, too:
https://fishbrain.com/fishing-waters/fC_lTnwm/braidwood-power-plant-cooling-pond
I can find a LOT more of these instances.
Conservation is fine under controls but remember the extreme animal rights groups are antihuman and think population control and reduction in Africa is needed so that there is more room for lions and elephants. Rather what is needed is the already conserved places to be managed better.
Clearly this wanton destruction of Gaia has to be modelled by the experts in the interests of settled science-
Turning Sahara into a solar farm? It may not result as good as researchers think (interestingengineering.com)
That settles it and we have to stop this libido for albedo and more global warmening.
The fact that it would only take solar panels on 1.2% of the Sahara to power the entire world, the whimsy of the thought exercise is obvious. But also given that applying solar panels on all suitable rooftops in the US alone would meet 34% of the country’s demand is also intriguing. No additional land usage required at all. Food for thought.
Have used this argument with ecoloons when they are spouting how EV’s will save the planet, I ask them where do they think the rare earth metals will come from and ask if they would like the huge areas dug up to get them. Giving the them the hint that the clue is in the name, rare meaning there’s not a lot about and you have to dig vast areas to get a small quantity of what you want.
James Bull
>> I ask them where do they think the rare earth metals will come from<< It’s hilarious that nobody was overly concerned about rare earth mining until the Big Oil shills started trying to use it as a way to discredit renewables. Rare earth metals have been used for many decades for a variety of industrial uses. Cobalt, for example, is used to make parts for gas turbine engines. Cobalt is also used to make airbags in automobiles; catalysts for the petroleum and chemical industries; cemented carbides (also called hardmetals) and diamond tools; corrosion- and wear-resistant alloys; drying agents for paints, varnishes, and inks; dyes and pigments; ground coats for porcelain enamels; high-speed steels; magnetic recording media; magnets; and steel-belted radial tires.
And then there’s lithium. Again, used for many decades in a variety of applications. But now Oil Shills are targeting it because it’s used in LiOn batteries. (And part of their misinformation campaign is focused on a photo of a copper mine, for some reason.) Fortunately, other battery technologies, carbon-ion, for instance, are beginning to come into the market. Within 10 years, lithium batteries will most likely join nickel-metal hydride and nickel-cadmium technology in the museum. But, in the meantime, mining for lithium (notably in desolate areas of Nevada, Australia, and the Atacama Desert in Chile) will be supplemented if not eventually replaced by petrolithium filtration and refinement technology. (https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/lithium-alberta-oilsands-1.5424527?fbclid=IwAR1oEp4eUzUe7CQjasDAj69tx8Y-S1uw3uU4yg8w8haZZN0FofYwmIpZaWQ)
“But…but… What about all the other rare earth metals??” the shills will still screech. As luck would have it, the Japanese have found a *massive* deposit of rare earth near Minamitori Island. How massive? Literally hundreds of years’ worth of raw supply, and virtually infinite when considering recyclying. That’s massive.
But of course the Oil Shills will still do their best to flip the script and paint renewable energy as dirty and destructive. This is of course nonsense. Even when considering all aspects of current mining, refining, fabrication, installation, operation, and disposal/recycling, renewable energy is FAR less harmful to the environment than any fossil fuel solution for generating electricity. That’s just a fact of the science.