Commentary
I just came across an article by Michael Shellenberger titled “The Biggest Environmental Scandal in the World.” It’s about the plight of right whales, which have been dying at an alarming rate in recent years. The storied mammal is nearing extinction, apparently due to disruptions in the whales’ environment caused by offshore wind energy.
The scandal, according to Mr. Shellenberger, is that some environmental groups—organizations that one would expect to be rallying to protect the right whale—are remaining silent while accepting large donations from corporations that own the ocean-based windmills.
I agree wholeheartedly that this is a major environmental scandal. But is it the biggest? Possibly, but it’s far from the only one. Following is a list of other significant environmental scandals. You can form your own opinion about which one is the biggest.
In addition to windmills decimating the right whale population, land-based windmills (solar energy installations, too) are wreaking ecological havoc by killing birds, bats, and insects. Where are the green groups that used to decry human interference with the balance of nature?
Another scandal is the unnecessary death and destruction from wildfires. The human death toll at Lahaina, Hawaii, would have been far lower if prudent precautionary steps, such as building firebreaks and removing overgrown brush, had been taken. Just as the wildfires in northeastern Canada earlier this summer occurred primarily where there had been an absence of forest management, the passive decision to let nature take its course led to an unnecessarily large conflagration. Instead, progressive politicians and compliant media dishonestly blame climate change.
The ongoing terrorizing of our children in public schools by carrying out federal mandates to indoctrinate them with climate alarmism is a huge scandal. A record-high number of youth are suffering from anxiety and depression because their elders have filled them with scary stories about life on Earth becoming increasingly precarious as a grim cosmic payback for our fossil-fuel-derived affluence.
Another candidate for the biggest environmental scandal is China. While the U.S. government focuses on imposing radical changes on Americans’ lifestyles (e.g., federal regulations on everything from electricity generation to choice of automobile, stove, air conditioners, light bulbs, and so forth), China gets a free ride. Despite overall tense relations between our two countries, it seems that nobody in Washington is demanding that China curtail its rapid expansion of coal-fired power plants. With those plants emitting more carbon dioxide (CO2) than the rest of the world combined, drastic efforts to scale back CO2 emissions in the United States are essentially pointless. In fact, not only are U.S. leaders not criticizing China’s CO2 emissions, but they’re, in effect, encouraging them by relying on China to manufacture solar panels for us.
Since I’ve mentioned CO2, let me add that another major environmental scandal is the fanatical refusal of anyone in the “Green New Deal” camp to acknowledge the multiple benefits of CO2 emissions. Economically, cheap fossil fuels were a primary contributor to today’s prosperity. Environmentally, the noticeable greening of the planet and overall improvement in agricultural productivity in recent decades are evidence of the benefits of CO2.
Now, if CO2 is benign and beneficial, as I’ve stated, why is government policy so focused on unattainable fantasies such as “net zero”? This itself is a scandal of staggering proportions. “Official science” is the best “science” that government money (i.e., hundreds of billions of dollars over the years granted to scientists willing to go along with the dangerous global warming scenario) can buy. Have you ever noticed how a majority of the most outspoken dissenters from the alarmist camp are older scientists? Do you suppose senior scientists are more wise or less wise than their younger colleagues? Or could the difference be that scientists who haven’t yet achieved a secure retirement must adhere to the official policy line if they want to continue to receive funding for their work? That’s the case according to some eminent senior scientists, such as physicist William Happer. And let’s not forget President Dwight Eisenhower’s warning about “the prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money.”
Yet another environmental scandal is the pell-mell push toward mandatory use of electric vehicles (EVs). Maybe someday EVs will be consumers’ preferred choice. Today, however, between uncomfortable realities such as higher costs, the occasional exploding battery, more limited driving range, time-consuming recharging, and the possibility of net increases in CO2 emissions over the course of the complete production and usage cycle of EVs, a massive push toward EVs is horribly wrongheaded.
News of a scandal that just came to my attention was that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) acknowledged, in the pages of the Federal Register, that its proposed standards for ever-higher miles-per-gallon standards for fossil-fuel-powered vehicles impose a negative cost on society. Nevertheless, President Joe Biden continues to push for more stringent mileage standards in the name of averting climate change. But the EPA’s report shows that there are no climate change benefits from raising mileage requirements. The EPA reported that the net change to average global temperatures between now and 2060 from their announced new standards will be “0.000%.” Yet they insist on imposing burdens on auto manufacturers even when there’s zero societal benefit. Scandalous!
I’m sure there are other significant environmental scandals that I’ve overlooked in this hastily assembled list. Which one is the biggest? I don’t know; you decide. I think that our main concern should be simply that there are so many such scandals.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
