By Tina Grazier
Environmentalists have a long history of taking action to protect endangered species, ecosystems and habitat from the “ravages” of industry and man. The mere thought of a team of big Cats tearing through the Amazon to build a road…a road!…was enough to cause a green international meltdown. The sounds of chainsaws find them taking to the trees to live like monkeys. Such zealotry is usually reserved to the fanatically religious…on the other hand, this devotion to earth is a kind of religion so it is not surprising that many green efforts fail to include the needs and concerns of humankind.
Environmentalists of every stripe have worked hard, through government and the courts, to prevent industry from creating a “blight” on the landscape through practices like clear cutting and strip mining and to stop practices that caused pollution. In some cases they were right to call attention to problems and their input helped to inspire better practices. But quite often green activist have been totally inconsiderate toward the industries in question. In fact they have been downright hostile making demands so unreasonable that companies or businesses were destroyed and their employees out of luck.
Of course there are instances when this outrage and hoopla just doesn’t materialize. Take for instance what happens when a wind or solar industries comes along. Suddenly it’s time for green activists to have a parade! All thoughts of endangered species, ecosystems, and habitat literally go out the window. Even the name that’s used to describe these projects is deceptively soft and cuddly…wind farms are so natural!
Let’s get real! These aren’t farms by any stretch of the imagination; they are industry! And if the makers and supporters of “alternative energy” have their way they will one day become BIG industry occupying millions of acres of land and displacing and destroying species, some endangered and disturbing habitats. Apparently wind farms are also messing with the survival and wellness of humankind as well as birds and bats. Installation and maintainance will bring another set of problems and do considerable damage per the old green standard, the standard by which other industry have been forced to live. My question is, how long will it be until these industries are demonized for the environmental problems they create?
An example of this hypocrisy is highlighted in an article by Investor’s Business Daily:
Man is often shackled for the benefit of the goddess Earth. But apparently there are exceptions in which a threatened species can be evicted from its habitat. In the desert of San Bernardino County, tortoises are being removed so that “an estimated 17 federally threatened tortoises — and an unknown number of half-dollar-sized hatchlings” won’t be ” squashed by heavy equipment” at the construction site of a 3,280-acre solar energy plant, according to the Los Angeles Times. ** Despite the effort, some of the lumbering land turtles, threatened or not, will have their often 100-year-plus life spans cut short by the weight of a bulldozer. “We can never say we got them all out of there — these are cryptic creatures,” a Fish and Wildlife Service official told the Times. ** Even those spared a crushing end might not survive. Tortoise translocation has “a dismal track record,” says the Times. The turtles tend “to wander, sometimes for miles, often back toward the habitat in which they were found.” Worse, the “stress of handling and adapting to unfamiliar terrain renders the reptiles vulnerable to potentially lethal threats” from dogs, ravens, coyotes, respiratory disease, dehydration and vehicles. (emphasis mine)
Am I exaggerating about this hypocrisy? Is IBD just making this stuff up? Not according to another article I found that tells the tale of the Army’s battle on the tortoise relocation/environmental agency front.”
The Army started moving the tortoises in late March from the southern boundary of the National Training Center at Fort Irwin as part of an $8.5 million effort to deal with the threatened species while expanding its training grounds into the land considered critical for the tortoises. ** The move capped a 20-year battle between the military and environmentalists. ** Two environmental groups have threatened to sue the Army over the large-scale relocation of the tortoises, and they plan to go ahead with the lawsuit to ensure the new habitat is managed actively, said Ileene Anderson, a biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity. (emphasis mine)
What do you want to bet the Army got the OK after twenty years only because government agencies couldn’t continue to deny the military and at the same time allow the solar company to go forward? Both are paying a huge relocation price but in terms of time twenty years cannot be made to look comparable in any way to the near instantaneous green light given to the solar company.
Funny how reasonable state and federal environmental agencies can be when the project is PC…suddenly moving these turtles, knowing that many will be killed and others placed at grave risk, is no big deal.
It’s time for the environmental lobbiests and activists to temper their zealotry and refrain from treating business as an enemy. It’s time for environmental government agencies to treat all industry equally. Sustainability should not be achieved at the expense of human survival. Economic sustainability is an important factor in quality of life issues and make a di9fference in preserving this beautiful planet.