The extraordinary emphasis on the theory of man-made climate change by politicians, pundits, academia, and Hollywood has eclipsed other vitally important environmental concerns.
The general fixation on global warming, which rejects any contrary scientific fact or opinion, takes attention and funding away from more proven and immediate conservation and planetary health matters.
To a significant extent, that is because the actual motivation behind much of the climate change movement has more to do with politics than science.
Chris Baskind, writing for the Mother Nature Network, outlined several more immediate environmental issues. He noted that within a 24 hour period, 214,000 acres of tropical forest disappear. Two billion gallons of sewerage will be dumped into the world’s oceans. 10,800 children will die from drought or the lack of clean drinking water.
Baskind reported that “…beyond the unblinking stare of MTV — far from the well-heeled audiences of London, Hamburg and Giants Stadium — away from the celebrity and speechmaking, humanity’s collective lack of environmental wisdom is already grinding nature underfoot. While some propose spending billions of dollars to combat the uncertain foe of climate change, more pressing matters already threaten to upend our everyday lives.”
In the drive to counter perceived threats from climate change, poor, occasionally irrational, decisions are made. Promises, such as those made by at least one presidential candidate to completely replace all fossil fuels within the next 50 years have little chance to succeed.
Wind and solar present significant and profound problems of affordability, reliability, wildlife destruction and habitat loss that will not be resolved in a fifty year time table.
The concept of building, according to one proposal, tens of thousands of wind turbines ignores the massive resulting kill rates of birds and bats, and that’s just one part of the problem. Wind power problems.org describes key issues:
“Wind plant infrastructure creates an industrial nightmare in wild and natural settings:
- Construction of 70ft wide access roads
- Installation of new transmission lines
- Construction of power substations
- Excavations and concrete for turbine foundations
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- 4-6 acres of forest is clearcut for each turbine.
- Construction of a 25-turbine wind facility clears enough trees to fill 100 football fields.”
Solar panels are another oft-cited panacea. But they provide substantial environmental damage, as well. A National Geographic study noted:
“Fabricating the panels requires caustic chemicals such as sodium hydroxide and hydrofluoric acid, and the process uses water as well as electricity, the production of which emits greenhouse gases. It also creates waste. These problems could undercut solar’s ability to fight climate change and reduce environmental toxics.”
American Thinker outlines multiple environmental problems:
“large-scale solar power will create environmental damage over large areas of land. Solar collectors may manage to convert only about 10% of the sun’s energy into electricity, the rest being reflected or turned into heat. But the whole solar spectrum is blocked, thus robbing 100% of the life-giving sunshine from the ground underneath, creating a man-made solar desert. For solar thermal, where mirrors focus intense solar heat to generate steam, birds that fly through the heat beams get fried. Why would true environmentalists support industrial-scale solar energy collection?… Desertec, the utopian U.S. $560-billion project designed to cover 16,800 square kilometers of the Sahara Desert with solar panels, and then export electricity 1,600 km to Europe, has collapsed.”
There is a clear and important place for wind and solar energy, but the wholesale replacement of existing energy facilities simply replaces one set of problems with another. The use of rooftop solar panels for use in individual buildings is a far different issue than utility-scale solar energy production, for example.
The extraordinary concentration on global warming produces rather odd mandates. The Washington Times recently reported that the Pentagon has “ordered commanders to prioritize climate change in all military actions.”
The directive includes combat commands. It is difficult to envision leaders of soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines “prioritizing” global warming as they seek to avoid immediate death and destruction from enemy action. “Dakota Wood, a retired Marine Corps officer and U.S. Central Command planner, said the Pentagon is introducing climate change, right down to military tactics level.”
A bullet strike or a nuclear attack can cause a lot more immediate and drastic problems than theories about climate change.