Climate crisis is caused by human activity.
So - how is increasing our activity helping?
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Watching the World Go Bye
Eliot Jacobson's Collapse of Everything Blog
Climate Change
Wind Power is Grotesque
June 6, 2024
You’ve got to know which side I’m on. I’m an old-school environmentalist, coming of age in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. More environmental f&%kery happened during my youth and more meaningful environmental policy was enacted in my youth than at any time or any place in modern industrial civilization’s history.
When I hear the youth of today complain about my generation and the actions we didn’t take, when they arrogantly utter “OK boomer” as if more should have been done back at some undefined moment when we knew better, I can only cite the anthropomorphic principle: but for what was accomplished they wouldn’t exist to complain about what wasn’t done. But for the policies, agencies, acts and laws we helped create through our protests and direct action, the environment would have already degraded into an unlivable hellscape. Rivers on fire. A massive hole in the ozone layer. Undrinkable water and unbreathable air. Oil spills and dead oceans. Nuclear waste and radiation from meltdowns. Toxic dumps spilling into waterways. Lead and DDT everywhere. The human population would be lower by billions.
Yeah, more could have been done, but here are just a few samples of what was accomplished in the 1970’s:
First Earth Day, April 22, 1970
Official Formation of NOAA, October 3, 1970
Official Formation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), December 2, 1970
Clean Air Act of 1970, December 31, 1970
Lead-Based Paint Restrictions, January 13, 1971
EPA Bans DDT, June 14, 1972
Limits to Growth is Published, October 1, 1972
Clean Water Act, October 18, 1972
Ocean Dumping Act, October 23, 1972
Leaded Gasoline Phase-Out, December 28, 1973
Endangered Species Act, December 28, 1973
Safe Drinking Water Act, December 16, 1974
Toxic Substances Control Act, October 11, 1976
Phaseout of Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), October 15, 1978
So what do we have today by way of new policy? The latest “accomplishment” is the so-called Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). At its core, the IRA is a money-dump to EV, solar and wind capitalists under the guise of speeding up the transition to renewable energy. The IRA is designed to facilitate the continued growth of industrial civilization, albeit with a shift in industries. Electric cars. Solar. Wind. Batteries. These are all products for sale by industries seeking growth and profit.
The most basic truth about the IRA is that it is emphatically not an environmental policy. The IRA is not fascilitating a choice between clean energy and fossil fuels. It is not either/or. The IRA is both/and. The more energy that the IRA helps create, the more our industries will find energy-hungry ways to use it. The latest energy scourges, crypto and AI, make this truth obvious to the casual observer. And like all new energy before it, the new energy we are creating with renewables will be sucked into the black hole created by Jevons paradox.
Today’s “environmentalists” are no longer the environmentalists of my youth. They want wind, solar, nuclear, so that they can have lives as comfortable as those of their parents and grandparents. But whenever the choice between the environment and humanity’s continued malignant growth is on the line, today’s environmentalists choose growth over the environment. Their choice is nowhere more clear than the green delusion of renewable “wind energy.”
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And maybe worst of all, wind towers and blades are short-lived, with current lifespan estimates between 20 and 30 years, at which time the entire structure, all of it, steel, iron, copper, fiberglass and concrete, needs to be demolished, transported away as mostly unrecyclable trash, and replaced.
Drive by any large-scale wind farm that’s been in operation for five years or more and you will see a landscape littered with non-functioning towers.
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Yes, fossil fuel use also suffers from a long list of tragic environmental impacts, many exceeding those of wind. Yes, fossil fuels are also grotesque. Our continued use of fossil fuels is powering the sixth great extinction. Yes, we should stop using fossil fuels. Yes, I am 100% behind groups like “Just Stop Oil” and the actions they take. But I am also 100% behind folks like Max Wilbert and other old-school environmentalists who are fighting new wind power developments.
The first step is to stop destroying the environment in a never-ending quest for more energy, believing that at some future time more energy will somehow help save the environment that same energy is destroying.
I often get asked for my solution, my answer to this predicament. I am an environmentalist. I love the environment. I love nature, life and biodiversity. I love this beautiful planet. And yes, I love it all more than global industrial civlization.
https://climatecasino.net/2024/06/this-is-grotesque/
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