Similar to a frenzied game of Three-card Monte allowed to proceed in the mouth of an alleyway in clear sight of a Chicago police precinct as officers are not permitted to cite misdemeanors, the Green New Deal and the federal government are constantly searching for marks to bilk in the absence of consequence.
Not only do the entities take advantage of the human element, but exploit nature to forward an agenda, which results in either higher taxes, or an assault on basic freedoms. Whether it be the (Mississippi) Dusky gopher frog, or the icon of liberty, the bald eagle, propaganda floods the entire evolutionary ladder. Unfortunately, for the vast majority of Americans, the stooges have yielded to indoctrination and within a half decade the nation will face an energy crises, as traditional sources of electricity gravitate towards the taboo in an ideological and procedural sense.
Speaking of sense, the surreal dynamic between the environmental movement and the feds defies reason in ditching logical with all the subtlety and decorum of a rabid racoon salivating and pacing wildly on the banks of a goldfish pond. As the two groups occasionally clash, they are more often aligned in a sultry dance number that reverses the time-tested gains of beneficial engineering facilitated 125 years ago. The unique synergy feeds on the emotional response of those inspired by the idea of saving the planet.
The current Broadway drama of energy upheaval, features the US electrical grid mutating into a tenuous framework of brownouts and policy-induced unreliability based on the German model activated under the Merkel administration. The dictator, disguised as Prime Minister, decreed that climate harming energy sources would be aggressively phased out, which garnered excellent reviews from progressives, though the performance and production values rival those of a kindergarten play, with half of the children spontaneously suffering a panic attack. Citizens have faced the harsh reality of electricity rationing during the Winter months, an absolute abomination for one of the globe’s leading economies.
As the disingenuous smile of Al Gore shines through the clouds of the politicized stage in generating a kilowatt hour of negative energy, the latest spar between the green industry, and the US government displays all the facets of hope and liberal guilt transcending practical reality. Over the last three decades expansive land owners have been awarded lucrative sums to host an expansive environmental experiment in attempting to harvest the breath of mother nature, and even within the circle of extremists there exists evidence of dissention in squabbling over the best methodology to appease all facets of the special interest lobby.
Allegedly, an expansive wind energy venture, NextEra, is guilty of slaying 150 bald and golden eagles over a the course of a decade, and the environmental division of the Department of Justice is demanding sanctions and financial compensation. The blades of various wind turbines are apparently complicit in the deaths of birds of prey no longer listed as threatened or endangered. While “rudder kill” has conservationists wary and is a major talking point to opponents of the venture, the sample size is too miniscule in drawing a reasonable conclusion, as to the plausible serious hazard to wildlife. Of course, the negligence of home owners has not entered the dialogue, as residential windows do their part in decimating the native songbird population.
Sarcasm withstanding, the financial and probationary penalties come at a curious time, as the Biden administration is pressing for an immediate gravitation to alternative energies, while ignoring the existing healthy infrastructure of extensive oil resources beneath the Dakotas, the prevalence of hydroelectric power efficiently and cheaply harvested throughout the Pacific Northwest with minimal environmental impact.
The tense moments before a vulture is dissected by a 165-foot long turbine blade.
Critics of wind farms and ornithologists have cited concerns that the propellers mounted on the bounding stanchions are a viable threat to a cavalcade of native bird species. The technology in its early development stages is already publicly maligned for being highly inefficient, and with major design and hardware flaws handshaking the battery storage units with the grid. An then there is always the pertinent question of how the toxic expired energy cells are properly disposed of.
As the harvesting of wind and solar gradually increases to a feasible performance standard which is decades away, policy makers and the leadership of the green industry continues to lobby for the termination of fossil fuels and hydroelectric dams, despite the heavy returns on investments and the simplicity of the productive technology. Unfortunately, nuclear power plants also face the brunt of activists and have been maligned by skeptics as Fukushima, Three Mile Island, and Chernobyl remain the tiresome example in stigmatizing fission with elements of fear. As climate crises is the current refrigerator magnet indicator of the hysteria is stuck on red and environmentalists lack an understanding of the basic tenets of thermodynamics, the industrialized world pays the price. This results in vacuous hijinks spurred by the United Nations, in burdening developing nations of undernourished populations with the same standards for environmental protocol as the West, a bad idea that is hastily jotted down on a cocktail napkin marked by the organizational logo.
The staggeringly low rate of apparent documented eagle deaths in a ten year period and spanning eight states exemplifies not only hyperbole, but the cannibalistic nature of the federal government to settle a score against an unlikely adversary, thanks to heat from the fickle and snarky, yet powerful Audubon society (A recent interlude at a local wine bar earned a dosage of angst for mispronouncing “Pileated”.). The fact that NextEra energy receives healthy subsidies directly from Washington D.C. to operate a flawed array of wind farms that were doomed to fail miserably from the CAD design phase, is an irony lost on government officials, or maybe simply ignored. It is at this coalescence of mind-bending unknowns, where one has to question the tendency to simply rubber stamp a document in approving an unfeasible venture, rather than making the world a better place through effective policy.