Does the Green New Deal Involve Killing Bald Eagles?
Blood on the blades? Are thousands of dead bald eagles too high a price to pay for “clean” energy?
By Gregory Wrightstone
ast week the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that they had sentenced ESI Energy for a “blatant disregard” of federal wildlife laws of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA). In their guilty plea to multiple violations, ESI admitted to the killing of at least 150 bald and golden eagles across 50 of its wind-energy facilities since 2012. Nearly all died of blunt force trauma attributable to being struck by a wind-turbine blade.
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 fine and sentencing was NOT because they killed many dozens of our national symbol, but rather that they killed them without first acquiring the necessary permits that would have legalized the slaughter.
Why would ESI simply fail to do the paperwork that is regularly a part of the process for permitting wind facilities? The answer: money, and a lot of it.
The most egregious project was located in Converse County, Wyoming, known as the Cedar Springs I, II and III wind-power facilities. In the spring of 2019, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) informed the company that Cedar Springs was expected to kill 44 golden eagles and 23 bald eagles over the first five years of operations and recommended that the “proposed wind facilities not be built.” Later that same year the FWS repeated its objection and recommended that the facility, if built, should “implement seasonal curtailment during daylight hours.” Construction continued, and no curtailment was employed.
According to DOJ, the company expedited construction “intended to meet, among other things, power purchase agreement commitments and qualifying deadlines for particular tax credit rates for renewable energy.” The DOJ press release further stated: “ESI and its affiliates received hundreds of millions of dollars in federal tax credits for generating electricity from wind power at facilities that it operated, knowing that multiple eagles would be killed and wounded without legal authorization.”
This $8 million settlement appears to be the cost of doing business for ESI in order for them to cash in on the Big Wind green energy scam.
READ MORE HERE:
Gregory Wrightstone, is a geologist and the Executive Director of the CO2 Coalition in Arlington Virginia. He is bestselling author of Inconvenient Facts: The Science that Al Gore doesn't want you to know.