Beyond Bad News?

A Thing with Feathers

The Random Animal has spent the last week in a news-induced coma. It seems that politicians and speculators have decided that in order to save the economy, they must destroy it. Maybe, maybe, out of all the upheaval, corporations and financial institutions that are sitting on money will start creating new jobs in areas like Green Energy?
Yes, Hope is a thing with feathers, provided Hope doesn't get downgraded to Double A wishful thinking. Things with feathers are facing threats right now from energy production plans. Ideal resolutions are somewhere in the distant heavens, and the significant immediate concern is determining what projects or compromises are most sustainable.
A local headline announced about a week ago that a Wind Turbine Farm in a Mississippi River town could harm nesting eagles.  According to the article about a proposal for a 12,000 acre project (that's big),  "the developer could face civil or even criminal action under federal laws if a bald eagle or an even more rare golden eagle is felled by one of the massive blades."  A spokesman for the energy company claimed that the placement of 50 turbines is being planned so "they will cause the least harm to flying wildlife, from long-eared bats to loggerhead shrikes to eagles." He added that all projects had risks and said "I don't know that a wind farm has ever been built that didn't result in some bird or bat mortality."
The townspeople object--are they too adamant in their support of eagles?
It seems the anti-wind turbine group formed because residents didn't like the idea of turbines so close to their property. They didn't mention eagles until the birds' presence came out in the energy company's impact report. Then the protesters flocked (sorry) to the birds' defense. The protesters claim there are about 8 nests in the vicinity, the company says 2, and wildlife agencies count 4 to 6. It's hard to get unbiased evidence. IF the project moved several miles away, would eagles still be in the way? Would the protest group, once the project left their backyard, care?
Wind Turbines can hurt wildlife. I live in a town with two--two is not a big number, and birds are not found at the base. There are several possible explanations; the turbines aren't on migratory paths or right next to a large nesting site. But they're close enough to small wildlife habitats that owls, hawks, the odd coyote, a stray cat, and more, come by to see if there's an easy breakfast and if there is a songbird corpse, it disappears. That is NOT an endorsement of all wind turbine projects, and many environmental groups see greater threats in other sources of energy.
Like the Keystone XL pipeline. It would run from Tar Sands in Northwest Canada to Texas. The company already has other pipelines in place. Another company with oil lines in place (heard of Exxon?) did not advance its smeary reputation with a July 1 spill along the Yellowstone River in Montana. According to an EPA report issued today, August 9, the oil from that Silvertip line break that wasn't captured in clean-up from the river banks is "degrading naturally in the environment." Let's hope that's true.The Silvertip line is done.
But that still leaves TransCanada's Keystone XL pipeline in the works. The project requires permission from the U.S. Department of state to cross the international border. Ted Williams, writing in Audubon Magazine,  fears for the birds--and human residents along the proposed trail. As he explains in "Tarred and Feathered", the extraction of the oil means that at the Canadian end "the entire native ecosystem has to be bulldozed away, the tar sands below strip-mined." It gets better (or worse). The XL line "will be buried inside the largest underground reservoir on the planet--the Ogallala Aquifer, which charges rivers, lakes, and marshes and supplies drinking and irrigation water to eight states." And what runs through the pipe from Alberta to Houston? Diluted Bitumen, with "high concentrations of chloride salts, sulfur, abrasive minerals, and acids." Oh, and lots of carbon dioxide--perhaps 27 million metric tons--will be released annually in the entire process. What else is along the path? According to Williams, "habitat for 30 percent of the continent's land birds--at least 215 species." Included in that group are the sandhill crane and the still-rare whooping crane.
Worst case scenarios can be imagined, and it seems that internationally politicians, economists, and media people have been excellent at presenting worst-case scenarios on debt and investment. There are real concerns, but elements of the crisis seem to exist in computer simulations and spreadsheets and political campaigning. Time to get outdoors, look at a non-virtual landscape, before slipping back into a coma. . .

More Things with Feathers

Find the solution yet?