Posted on 04/10/2025 9:43:35 AM PDT by george76
Large-scale solar farms, wind turbines, and associated infrastructure are touted as solutions to the climate crisis, but their development comes at the cost of native forests and critical habitats.”
“Until conservation charities disentangle themselves from government funding and corporate influence, they risk becoming complicit in the very destruction they were created to prevent.”
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One of the great ironies of our age is the double standard of Big Environmentalism toward wind and solar, which commit numerous eco-sins that would not be tolerated otherwise. Dilute, intermittent, and thus inefficient? Yes. Energy sprawl requiring service roads and transmission lines in the wild? Yes. A threat to wildlife on land and in the water? Yes. And mining issues, even using child labor? Yes.
But it is “anti-CO2 or bust” for the foes of modern, prosperous living in a free society. They want a state of nature, a Garden of Eden, as if humankind did not matter. Deep Ecology is a religious cult—that is, in the area of energy, an enemy of Global Greening.
Will the hypocrisy end? Or is it beginning to end? The latest evidence suggesting growing doubts about the “solution” to climate change was posted by Kelly Jones (Carbon8 Fund), “Funding the Silence: Why Conservation Charities Won’t Speak Against Habitat Loss.”
The Australian government’s aggressive push for renewable energy has created a significant moral dilemma for conservation charities. On one hand, these organisations are entrusted with protecting ecosystems and bziodiversity; on the other, they are increasingly reliant on public funding tied to government renewable energy initiatives. The result? A deafening silence in the face of environmental destruction, as raising concerns about habitat loss could jeopardise their financial stability. This isn’t conservation—it’s capitulation.
Renewable energy projects are a double-edged sword. Large-scale solar farms, wind turbines, and associated infrastructure are touted as solutions to the climate crisis, but their development comes at the cost of native forests and critical habitats. Vulnerable species like koalas are being pushed to extinction, yet conservation charities, aware of these impacts, find themselves in a compromising position: challenge the renewable energy narrative and risk losing funding, or remain silent and perpetuate the destruction.
Corporate influence further complicates the issue. Renewable energy companies, eager to greenwash their operations, channel significant donations into conservation initiatives. These partnerships create a façade of environmental responsibility while insulating companies from criticism. Conservation organisations, incentivised by these donations, turn a blind eye to the damage caused. In the race for renewable dominance, profit-driven alliances have reduced Australia’s biodiversity to collateral damage.
The erosion of public trust is a particularly stark betrayal. Australians contribute to conservation charities believing their donations will safeguard wildlife and ecosystems. Instead, those funds often bolster partnerships with industries that undermine conservation goals. Government funding and corporate donations have transformed many conservation groups from independent advocates into silent enablers of habitat destruction.
True conservation demands courage—speaking out even when it’s inconvenient and advocating for solutions that coexist with biodiversity. Until conservation charities disentangle themselves from government funding and corporate influence, they risk becoming complicit in the very destruction they were created to prevent. Transparency, accountability, and a commitment to real environmental protection are essential to restore trust and ensure Australia’s unique wildlife has a future.
So next time you support conservation in Australia, be sure to check what solutions your money is funding. If you are giving to protect the koala, make sure the organisation’s advocacy and solutions are genuinely aligned with biodiversity protection—and far removed from the destructive impacts of renewable energy projects.
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Kelly Jones asks the hard questions, such as “Please explain how destroying our native bushland to build wind and solar farms is going to reduce the temperature of the whole planet?” Her viewpoint is utopian— seeking the perfect energy—but she is on track with the illusion of wind and solar as “environmental.”
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While solar and wind power are often touted as clean energy cornerstones, they’ve proven to be environmental disasters.”
The Dirty Secret of Clean Energy: How Renewables Devastate Communities and Ecosystems
“While marketed as the solution to climate change, renewable energy has a dark side that is rarely discussed. The extraction of critical resources—such as lithium, cobalt, and nickel—essential for batteries, wind turbines, and solar panels, wreaks havoc on ecosystems and communities.”
Someone gets it!!
The man-made, global warming scam is about money and power.
I’m livid when I see farmland turned into a sea of solar panels. Visually...it doesn’t even look like the right thing to do.
Not to mention the birds that are chopped and fried by the windmills and solar panels
But but but… tEh ScIeNcE!!
Solar farms and windmill operations reduce food production = war on farmers = as the soil is often destroyed by nasty chemicals.
Hail storms can reduce the economic life of solar panels from ~20 years to months.
Biggest danger is all of the infrastructure they’ve installed especially on house rooftops that are already falling apart and mostly unable to be repaired.
Much of these substandard systems were put in by people with little but no training.
As the system decouples from this lunacy the safety of removing these things is not accounted for yet.
The coming trash pile from it is also not yet accounted for.
IF...if....if only we had a gaseous or solid/powdered type, extremely high-BTU content fuel that burned clean as a whistle, or perhaps someone could even come up with, or invent, some way to safely harness the energy out of a atom of some sort. IF only we could do that or had some of those ficticous fuels....just sayin’. Oh...wait.... /s
There is nothing “green” concerning so called “green energy”. Solar farms use minerals that have to be mined. Mining causes extreme pollution and destruction of wildlife habitat. Solar panels last from 25- 50 years or so, and the materials are not recycled as of yet. Broken solar panels leech toxins into landfills. Windmills kill thousands of birds each year including eagles, hawks, owls, crows and songbirds. Offshore ones kill gulls an terns as well. Each turbine requires approx. 800 gallons of oil to lubricate moving parts. The oil needs to be changed occasionally. You just know there will be spills. Also they need to be sprayed with anti-freeze solutions when a snowstorm or ice storm is predicted. “Green”? I don’t think so.
There is a big effort by land owners to keep wind turbines out of Stephens Co.
There is a big effort by land owners to keep wind turbines out of Stephens Co.
Awesome.
Dig mines in other countries, build factories in other countries, have farms in other countries, offshore the jobs and the pollution and the mess. Return the most productive farmland in the world to nature, so that more nature somewhere else will be farmland.
But...cut trees down here for subsidized solar, burn birds here, flail them out of the air, have the turbines rumble subsonic day and night.
Scrape bare the earth, tear out the roots, in North Carolina and Texas, Romania and Bulgaria, so that the Germans can burn wood pellets instead of coal.
My main problem with solar farms is that they're intended to provide power to the grid. Hint: grid power is supposed to be dependable power and solar ain't dependable.
And I'm not anti-solar. In fact I have plenty of decentralized solar. But my solar is designed to minimize how much power I have to pull from the grid, not make me money selling to the grid. (In other words, make our family more energy self-sufficient, but I don't put enough power onto the grid for the power engineers to count as something that helps them.)
Solar, like everything else, can be great for certain use cases, but always horrible when the govt forces it onto us.
Good.. Ted Kennedy, the swimmer kept windmills out of his ocean view of his Mass. home and sailing areas while was alive.
Cutting down forests is the peak of stupid. Using existing roofs to generate power and also cool the buildings under them is a no brainer. My homes plural all have panels they make more power than the homes use so I get paid for the excess. I harvest rain water under them and it’s tested regularly for quality as all rain capture should be. Modern panels are thin film silicon with boron and phosphorus P/N silicon there is no cadmium,lead ,arsenic any more that’s solar tech from decades ago. Even the solder joints are silver and aluminum wires now no lead or tin. We get 220+ days of full sun and many more partly cloudy in this part of Texas. Go west from here and it’s a lot more. Point is using existing roof tops makes sense from a energy balance sense and economics as well. My panels EROI time was under 6 months and their economic payback was just over 4 1/2 since I can sell at commercial rates with my TIN nunbers. Over the 25 year warrantied lifespan of the panels they will make a kWh of electrons for fractions of a cent per kWh. No other means of onsite generating or offsite transporting electrons to my property can come close to that metric. Retail power is 8 cents per kWh. Not coal, not gas, not nuclear none of them can touch how cheap those panels can put electrons to my wall outlets or Tesla chargers. I financed them personally out of pocket , but could have rolled them into the note in escrow just as easy they would’ve cost interest for 1/3 of the 15 year note.
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