Posted on 07/03/2021 3:36:56 AM PDT by Kaslin
Environmental activism was already nasty and lethal when I wrote Eco-Imperialism: Green Power – Black Death18 years ago. It’s gotten steadily worse since then, especially with hysteria about the “looming manmade climate apocalypse” driving ever more extreme demands that we rid the world of fossil fuels and prohibit or roll back modern living standards.
The demands have reached previously unimaginable extremes – based primarily on GIGO computer models and wild assertions about planetary temperatures, weather, ice caps, and vanishing wildlife. The claims have little basis in real-world evidence but are presented as Gospel Truth by climate alarmists.
One group of extremists wants to make what it calls “ecocide” an “international crime” – then prosecute and imprison political leaders and corporate executives who have engaged in “mass ecological destruction” that these zealots assert has now reached a magnitude “similar” to Nazi genocide.
Others are agitating for a “Great Reset” – demanding that corporations reject their traditional roles and goals, and focus instead on “saving the planet” and advancing racial and gender “equity.” This unavoidably means companies must embrace “a certain degree of eco-dictatorship,”corporate-state tyranny and “top-down authoritarianism.” But in exchange, they will reap huge profits by disrupting access to reliable energy and reducing middle and working-class living standards, in the name of climate.
The radical left routinely employs eco-hysteria and Nazi analogies to deflect attention from the horrific disease and death tolls they have inflicted on Third World “people of color,” by denying them access to reliable energy, spatial insect repellants, and modern farming technologies. Slinging epithets at fossil fuel providers, users, and defenders is as wanton, wicked, and baseless as claims the Nazis made to justify exterminating Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, disabled people, and other “undesirables.”
Meanwhile, in the real world, the REAL threats to our planet, people, wildlife, and freedoms come from the green zealots who demand we replace hydrocarbon energy with electricity generated by weather-dependent wind turbines and solar panels, and backed up by half-ton Tesla-style battery modules.
This Green New Deal would reverse job creation, economic growth, revenue collection, and human health and welfare gains. It would inflict ecological damage on scales unprecedented in history.
The Harris-Biden Administration wants 80% hydrocarbon-free electricity generation by 2030, 100% by 2035, and elimination of fossil fuels from all sectors of the U.S. economy by 2050. This would require replacing coal and natural gas for generating electricity; gasoline and diesel for powering vehicles; natural gas for smelting and manufacturing; and natural gas for heating, cooking, and water heating.
Together, this would send the nation’s annual electricity requirement soaring from about 2.7 billion megawatt-hours (the fossil fuel portion of total U.S. electricity in 2018) to almost 7.5 billion MWh per year by 2050. Substantial additional generation would be required to constantly recharge backup batteries for windless, sunless days, to safeguard society against blackouts, cyberattacks, and wholesale collapse.
Generating all that electricity without new nuclear and hydroelectric plants would require tens of thousands of 850-foot-tall offshore wind turbines, hundreds of thousands (perhaps millions) of somewhat smaller onshore turbines, and billions of photovoltaic solar panels. Backing up sufficient nationwide electricity for even one week of windless, sunless days would involve well over a billion battery modules. Connecting all this and our cities would require thousands of miles of new transmission lines.
The number is high because wind and sun generate electricity only 25-50% of the year in the best locations (less than 33% on average nationwide), and the more “green” electricity we need, the more we must put turbines and panels in lower quality areas, where they generate power only 15-20% of the year. Just President Biden’s plan to install 30,000 megawatts of wind power off America’s coasts by 2030 would require 2,100 14-MW turbines. Even if they operated at full capacity 24/7, they would not meet peak summer electricity needs for New York State, much less the entire USA.
Even if wind and solar facilities avoided the most highly sensitive areas, they would still disrupt or destroy scenic areas, croplands, and wildlife habitats. Turbine blades would kill millions of birds and bats. Vibration noise from offshore turbines would disrupt whale and dolphin navigation and communication.
All these turbines, panels, batteries, and power lines would require tens of billions of tons of non-renewable iron, copper, aluminum, cobalt, lithium, rare earth elements, plastics, limestone, and other materials. That would require mining, crushing, processing, refining, and transporting tens of billions of tons of ores– from thousands of mines and quarries, using gigantic gasoline and diesel equipment – followed by smelting and manufacturing, with fossil fuels. None of this is clean, green, or sustainable.
These energy-intensive activities employ hazardous chemicals and release toxic pollutants. They require enormous volumes of water, often in the world’s most water-deprived regions. They cause acid mine drainage, create mountains of waste rock, and often result in vast “lakes” of toxic chemicals.
Just that initial Biden offshore wind program would require millions of tons of materials, including 110,000 tons of copper. At an average of 0.44% copper in all types of copper ore deposits today, that means just those first 2,100 offshore turbines would require mining, crushing, and processing 25 million tons of copper ore, after removing some 40 million tons of overlying rock to reach the ore bodies.
Add in materials for solar panels, onshore wind turbines, backup battery systems, subsea and onshore electrical lines, electric vehicles, electric heating systems, and other technologies – and the “U.S. energy transformation” would require raw materials in excess of the entire world’s current and foreseeable mining and processing capabilities. A global Green Deal would require mining half our solar system.
Environmental fanatics insist that the United States continue to stymie or ban mining, even to support their grand energy, economic and societal reset. They and Team Biden insist that we outsource all this mining, mostly to China. They couldn’t care less about compromising our national security or their supposed commitment to environmental protection, human rights, and climate justice.
Chinese companies already control the mining and processing of many GND minerals mined in Africa and other countries, and the manufacturing of a majority of wind turbines, solar panels, and batteries. They rarely apply U.S. laws and standards for environmental protection, pollution control, mined land reclamation, workplace safety, fair wages, child and slave labor, or human rights.
Some 40,000 children as young as four already toil with their parents in Democratic Republic of Congo mines, for a few dollars a day, under constant threat of cave-ins and exposure to toxic and radioactive mud, dust, and water – just to meet today’s cobalt needs, which would skyrocket under a Green New Deal. The cobalt ore is sent to China for processing in plants that have equally abominable safety and pollution conditions, and have been linked to alarming cancer, blood disease, and other health problems.
An enormous toxic dump for effluents from rare earth mining and processing in Inner Mongolia has destroyed agriculture and created serious health issues for workers and residents. China uses Uighur slave labor to build solar panels for sale to the United States and Europe.
Woke climate and human rights activists become apoplectic when clothing and coffee makers and importers fail to meet their lofty “fair trade” standards. Maybe they should travel to Moscow, Kinshasa, Beijing, Xinjiang, and Hong Kong, don their ski masks, and rage, burn and loot for our planet, Uighur rights, and “responsible sourcing” of raw materials for the Green New World they want to foist on us
Meanwhile, CFACT’s amicus curiae brief supports a multistate lawsuit against the Biden Administration over its fossil fuel eradication plans and phony “social costs of carbon” claims. It brings much-needed reality to the “climate chaos” and “renewable” energy charade.
Absolutely, the cure is always worse than the disease. They never look ahead at the long term cause and effect.
The Religion of Pan-Gaiaism, sister to the World Wide Church of Perpetuo-Omni-Copulationism, in which you may not question anyone’s right “to do it” with any one, thing or child.
Playboys do it with flair
Poets do it with wit
I know I shouldn’t care
But what the heck is “it”?
The mentally ill are running the show
This is a psychological feeding frenzy trend, like the gold rush. Green or bust. Most will bust.
Many, many moons ago God and nature came up with an amazing material that stores and preserves the energy of the Sun. China is using this material to create electric power. This material is neither evil, nor blessed, but it is most certainly a blessing. Good ol’ coal. Obambi tried to shut down electricity from coal in the United States, while at the same time shipping TONS of coal to the Chicoms where they used it to generate electricity. The not so secret, dirty little secret, is that democRATS do not want Americans to have easy access to energy. They stated over and over that we could not drill our way to energy independence... until we did. There can be no greater contrast between freedom and tyranny than when SloJo began eliminating all the resources that created this energy independence.
What a Fracking Idiot!
The worse thing is that many of their cures actually end up creating an even worse environmental issue in the long run than if they had just left it alone.
Nimrod was the first world wide “Green” leader. He sought to counter God’s ‘climate change’ by building an exceedingly tall building to survive any flood that God might cause. It didn’t work out too well for him.
Nimrod was the first “Green” leader who thought he could overcome God’s climate change by building the tallest building in the world to survive the next flood. It didn’t work out well for him.
Bookmark
The present day environmentalists degraded into inflicting the worst environmental damage to the Earth. E.G. solar cell plants destroy huge areas of beautiful countryside, they do create not only hazardous waste, but the land becomes waste, full of weeds which need to be destroyed by hazardous chemicals.
Cleaning of solar cells causes many accidents and deaths, making solar cell energy the deadliest energy available.
That is one. But there are many examples going all the way back to when it all started with the desert tortoise and expanded from that into everything “Environmental”. Been documenting it for years now.
They always forget about the cause and effect of human nature. There are so many examples it is incredible. And the Sierra Club who first started it all, and still continues is the worst enemy to the environment there is.
Their actions of grabbing land through government force and then turning it into tourist attractions is absolutely devastating and the worst thing that could happen to something that should be protected.
I was at ground zero when the Sierra Club and Cranston pushed the scam that the Desert Tortoise was endangered. I personally witnessed the criminal false and rigged studies that named Gopherus agassizii as endangered.
It was all a land grab scam and it snowballed from there. I have example after example of the long term failures from the shortsightedness and quick profits in the name of environmental protection.
Oh, yes, the spotted owl destroyed all forest maintenance in huge part of Rockies, creating fire hazards resulting in monstrous fires.
The Mont Graham Squirrel “protection” resulted in Mont Graham forest being burned to the ground. Before that, it created huge problems for the build of the world largest telescope (then).
The Sacramento Delta Smelt “protection” destroyed the California farming and did not helped the smelt a bit. I think it is now extinct in nature.
Rio Grande Minnow was “saved” by environmentalists during drought. They killed a lot of them, and prevented them from laying eggs. Like any desert fish, during drought the fish dies, but before that, it lies eggs which can survive and resurrect themselves when water returns. I think, despite all their efforts, the fish survived in nature?!
Yep... Fact. And not just animals... Construction methods and regulations...
An example is Paving asphalt in Ca. The old asphalt used to last 40 years before needing to be repaved again. Someone wrote a scientific thesis at Berkeley making a suggestion that a different binding oil would reduce the environmental toxins from water runoff 8%.
So the state adopts the concept and implements a new regulation that this new binding oil is now mandated for all paving in Ca. So now these roads have to be repaved up to three times in 20 years because it does not stick together or last.
Ok, so let’s do the math. Repaving up to six times in the same 40 year period,. Six times of equipment running, Air emissions, Fuel and operating fluids leaking, Tire wear and disposal, Emissions from the hot plants heating the asphalt, Etc. It adds up to much much more pollution in whole than that minuscule 8% they claim to be reducing.
With this regulation they created five times the pollution than if they had just continued to use the old binding oil that would last 40 years without need to repave. And they practice this ignorance with everything they do...
Turns out the state rep who pushed the law through had a family member who owned the rights and patent to produce this “special binding oil” that was now mandated. This is what it is all about and can be found behind everyone of these environmental laws.
Someone’s pocket is getting lined.
The “green movement” consists of about 2% of the people pulling the strings and lining their pockets. The other 98% are Useful Idiots.
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