Environmentalist Hypocrisy

The hypocrisy of environmentalists is humorous, particularly since they take themselves so seriously. A recent and ongoing example is the ban on Gualala Independence Day fireworks. Obviously, Gualala sea birds are more sensitive than Point Arena birds and require protection. But while the otherwise quite common Gualala sea birds don’t suffer momentary disturbance, environmentalists supported and heavily taxpayer-subsidized wind farms kill thousands of birds annually, many of which are rare and endangered birds of prey.

I laughed at a recent ICO cartoon: one of its characters was looking longingly at our wind-swept bluffs and envisioning a gargantuan wind turbine upon it. I think at various other times this cartoon has featured sea birds soaring over those bluffs, but hasn’t put together the birds soaring into the wind turbine blades yet.

At other times local environmentalists revolt at the prospect of the scenic pollution of offshore oil rigs (which because of advances in drilling techniques would be few in number and far apart) without regard for the large numbers of wind turbines it requires for a wind farm.

Of course, environmentalists give us intermittent, unreliable, and costly wind farms, plus the abomination of ethanol. Among its many taxpayer-subsidized shortcomings is that ethanol requires more energy to produce than it delivers, and takes food from the mouths of the poor. In a “fracking” article in this month’s National Geographic, environmentalists bemoaned the water needed for fracking, without noting that far more water (and natural gas for making fertilizer) is needed to grow the crops to make the ethanol. And, delicious irony of ironies, than the combustion of ethanol releases CO2, too, and so do the farming tractors, and the trucks that haul the corn, and the ethanol refineries.

Environmentalists require tunnel vision as they quest to save us all.