Did you manage to catch this story this week? Wind energy company kills 150 eagles in US, pleads guilty kind of made the rounds this week, but some people simply didn't care. Now if a famous politician had killed 150 eagles on a hunting trip, it would have been 24/7 news. But it was just one of America's biggest energy conglomerates killing eagles while it "saved the planet" by generating electricity from wind, so it wasn't big news.
The story tells us
The story tells us
A subsidiary of one of the largest U.S. providers of renewable energy pleaded guilty to criminal charges and was ordered to pay over $8 million in fines and restitution after at least 150 eagles were killed at its wind farms in eight states, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.
NextEra Energy subsidiary ESI Energy was also sentenced to five years probation after being charged with three counts of violating the Migratory Bird Treaty Act during a court appearance in Cheyenne, Wyoming. The charges arose from the deaths of nine eagles at three wind farms in Wyoming and New Mexico.
But what does NextEra care? It's raking in billions of dollars every year in the form of production tax credits for generating electricity from wind. What's $8M between friends? NextEra is simply giving the government its own money back... a drop in the ocean of riches NextEra has stuffed into its own pocket over the years. I think NextEra has absolutely no remorse and will continue to kill as many birds as it wants. If it shuts the turbines down to save the eagles, then it doesn't earn as much money from the federal government, who pays for energy actually generated.
You should be outraged by this. But, more importantly, the "Big Green" organizations, like Sierra Club, should be outraged. But I don't see any of the big organizations quoted in the article coming to the defense of eagles.
Why? Remember this? When the Sierra Club was taking money from the gas industry and calling natural gas a "bridge fuel" to a cleaner environment? Are these big organizations now taking money from energy companies promoting big wind? Where do these organizations get the cash that makes up their oversized budgets? They get a lot of it from private "foundations", but where do the "foundations" get their cash? Nobody seems to care. Advocacy groups for big wind and solar get their money from electric utilities. NextEra has a position on ACORE's board of directors. ACORE doesn't even mention eagles. None of the entities making money hand over fist building and operating renewable energy facilities seem to care about the eagles.
Sierra Club got in a bind because its national policies conflicted with its individual members who saw gas destroying their local environment. The propaganda about "clean energy" we're all fed absolutely refuses to recognize that "clean energy" is also destroying our environment while purporting to save it. It's only a matter of time until the big environmental organizations are pushed by local members to stand against massive, industrial scale big wind and solar plants.
Perhaps it's coming sooner than they think...
You should be outraged by this. But, more importantly, the "Big Green" organizations, like Sierra Club, should be outraged. But I don't see any of the big organizations quoted in the article coming to the defense of eagles.
Why? Remember this? When the Sierra Club was taking money from the gas industry and calling natural gas a "bridge fuel" to a cleaner environment? Are these big organizations now taking money from energy companies promoting big wind? Where do these organizations get the cash that makes up their oversized budgets? They get a lot of it from private "foundations", but where do the "foundations" get their cash? Nobody seems to care. Advocacy groups for big wind and solar get their money from electric utilities. NextEra has a position on ACORE's board of directors. ACORE doesn't even mention eagles. None of the entities making money hand over fist building and operating renewable energy facilities seem to care about the eagles.
Sierra Club got in a bind because its national policies conflicted with its individual members who saw gas destroying their local environment. The propaganda about "clean energy" we're all fed absolutely refuses to recognize that "clean energy" is also destroying our environment while purporting to save it. It's only a matter of time until the big environmental organizations are pushed by local members to stand against massive, industrial scale big wind and solar plants.
Perhaps it's coming sooner than they think...
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