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Are thousands of dead bald eagles too high a price to pay for “clean” energy – Watts Up With That?


From CO2 Alliance

By Gregory Wrightstone

Last week US Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that they have sentenced ESI Energy for the “flagrant disregard” of federal wildlife laws by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA). In pleading guilty to multiple offenses, ESI admitted to killing at least 150 golden and bald eagles across its 50 wind energy facilities since 2012. Nearly all of them died from blunt force trauma to the tongue. wind turbine hit.

The so-called “clean” energy company – a subsidiary of NextEra Energy – was fined $8 million, or about $53,300 per carcass. It turns out that the fines and convictions were NOT because they killed dozens of our national icons, but that they killed them without first obtaining the necessary permits that legalized the slaughter.

Why has ESI failed to do the paperwork that is normally part of the wind facility licensing process? The answer: money, and a lot.

Large birds killed by windmills in bird morgues operated by the US Fish and Wildlife Service

The most severe project is located in Converse County, Wyoming, known as Cedar Springs I, II, and III wind power facilities. In the spring of 2019, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) informed the company that Cedar Springs expected to kill 44 golden eagles and 23 bald eagles in the first 5 years of operation. and recommends that “the proposed wind facilities should not be built. ” Later that year, FWS echoed its objections and recommended that the facility, if built, “make seasonal cuts during the day.” Construction continues, and no cuts have been made.

According to the DOJ, the company expedites construction “in order to meet, among other things, power purchase agreement commitments and eligibility deadlines for specific renewable energy tax credits. ” The DOJ press release adds: “ESI and its affiliates have received hundreds of millions of dollars in federal taxes to generate electricity from wind energy at the facilities it operates, knowing that many eagles will be killed and injured without legal permission.”

This $8 million payment appears to be ESI’s cost of doing business for them to cash in on the Big Wind green energy scam.

These eagles are like inattentive drivers texting on cell phones with their heads down and not looking up, unaware that a truck is stopping ahead. Like that distracted driver, the birds are searching for prey on the ground and aren’t aware of the danger lurking ahead until it’s too late.

The slaughter of eagles and other large birds of prey was legalized during the Obama administration and continues to this day. At that time, it was estimated that nearly 600,000 birds of all kinds were killed by the much smaller wind footprint at the time, including 83,000 birds of prey such as hawks, falcons and eagles.

What most people don’t know is that the FWS has set a “limit” for wind companies to kill bald eagles. This is similar to the bag limit for a hunter. However, the hunters didn’t dare because they weren’t in the protected class and would bear the maximum penalty $250,000 or two years in prison for a felony conviction. The FWS regularly fines oil companies and power transmission companies for inadvertently killing bald eagles, and issues a seal of approval for large-scale slaughter of blue eagles from turbines.

The limits of the bald eagle FWS are revised February 2022 allowing a more than fourfold increase in the amount of legalized slaughter.

Figure 1 – US Fish and Wildlife Service sets limits on bald eagles (revised February 8, 2022)

Those who promote the flawed idea that a full transition from fossil fuels to a wind and solar-only economy need to ask themselves, “At what cost?”

Gregory Wrightstone is a geologist, Executive Director of the CO2 Coalition in Arlington, Virginia, and an assessor for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (AR6). He’s the bestselling author of The Inconvenient Truth: The Science Al Gore Doesn’t Want You To Know.

This commentary was first published at People Events April 11, 2022

The image below was created by Thiago Hellinger for the CO2 Alliance and may be reproduced in its entirety with our permission with attribution.



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