Renewable Energy Bombshell
by Cathy Seitz
It’s just the news you dreaded to hear. Turning to renewable energy—wind, solar, hydro, etc. might not actually improve the climate crisis. In fact, it may just add more layers to the damage we are doing to the natural world, without producing enough energy to halt our dependence on fossil fuels. This is the case right now and will continue worsening unless we rethink our whole way of life, according to three recent reports, the most recent being Bright Green Lies, a book by Derrick Jensen and two others. Our only hope is the one environmentalists used to nag us about— to drastically reduce our consumption.
We are not just facing a climate out of balance, but water imbalance and the near collapse of insect populations. Demonstrators frequently throng the streets, demanding that governments do more to address climate change. Yet the current popular solution—moving from fossil fuels to renewable energies like solar, wind, and biomass, largely fails to address the other two crises—water shortage and loss of pollinators and other species. In fact, crowding massive solar, wind, and biomass farms onto our already stressed wild areas actually damages the very resources that could ameliorate climate imbalance, such as forests, wild prairies, and healthy soils. This is especially when you calculate the (usually neglected) full picture, such as the additional mining, dams, and entirely new transmission lines, bordered with clearcuts, that are now planned.
A few years ago, I visited the town of Joshua Tree, near the beautiful Joshua Tree National Monument in California. At a farmers market there, I got into conversation with one of the locals. He told me that an enormous solar farm had been constructed in the area, and he was concerned about the impact it was having on the local wildlife. He mentioned the desert tortoise, as well as birds, which sometimes died in flight because of how the facility was constructed. He said that he would prefer to see a series of small local solar generating plants, built with a view of getting around these and other problems.
Another time, I visited the community of Arcata, in northern California, and there found an uproar over a proposed wind farm. Although locals had initially supported the proposal, they actively opposed it when they discovered it would involve 40 cement platforms, each several acres in size, to be placed on one of the county’s unique wild areas. After a number of packed town meetings, the project was defeated, mostly by environmentalists!
There is another alternative besides fossil fuels or “renewable” energy. A number of people have studied the effects if we were to a: drastically increase organic style agriculture and b: protect and restore trees and natural landscapes. They conclude that changing either forestry or farming alone would drastically reduce greenhouse gases. We’re talking large scale here, of course, and time would be needed to make these transitions. But as we were changing, improvements would be steady, and we are already facing a similar timescale with the idea of solar and wind transition. And the external effects, instead of damaging the landscape, would be hugely good.
But, you cry, surely we can do both. Restore ecosystems and do regenerative agriculture, and also transition to solar and wind. Unfortunately, when you factor in all of the inputs required to set up alternative energies, you realize that doing so would involve truly extensive landscape damage. The amount of planet we have left in natural forests and prairies is already challenged. Particularly as human communities expand and demand more of the “developed” world’s goods and services. The fossil fuel industry has left, and continues to leave, damage that will take decades to heal. If instead of commencing this healing, we continue to deforest (to fuel most biomass plants, for example), we lose the climate advantage of having the forests.
These are the points made in 2021, when Derrick Jensen and two others published Bright Green Lies, followed by a film. With a style which is actually readable, complete with withering jest, Jensen et al. have gathered most of the proposals for limiting greenhouse gases. They have fleshed out how those projects would impact the environment if you looked at all or most of the effects. They include solar, wind, batteries, transmission lines, hydro, biofuels, and more. These cumulative effects are so bad, that at least for large-scale projects, it appears they should not be built at all. I think the jury is still out for, say small-scale biofuels, wind, or hydropower, and perhaps solar, but some of that could be argued as well. (In this paper I discuss solar, wind, etc. collectively, as Jensen’s book makes clear, none is without serious drawbacks. See the book for details.)
I say hats off to Jensen for the four years it took for him and his two co-authors to put this work together. Collectively we owe them an enormous debt, and the responsible thing would be for us to re-envision the whole Green New Deal, and maybe our whole civilization, as they suggest. There are human cultures which live without the consumptive patterns of modern society, and we need to look seriously in their direction for inspiration on how to go forward. This message: that we need to turn to the earth itself and to those societies which have lived closest to it; is echoed in a number of recent books. I like Charles Eisenstein’s Climate, a New Story and Val Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass.
About 2 years ago, Michael Moore and friends published the film, Planet of the Humans online, which roundly criticized the solar and wind industries. Planet of the Humans evoked much backlash, even being pulled offline for a short time. While some of its details were a bit foggy, I thought the overall message, “There are aspects of this that aren’t good for the environment,” was very needed. On the political left, no-one else of consequence was pointing this out. Moore and the other producers said they were mainly trying to start a discussion. Few people wanted to talk. As I see it, while that film had a few poorly done spots, by contrast Jensen's Bright Green Lies (with a few exceptions) is well documented, detailed, and extensive in its look at the shift away from fossil fuels.
Here's my opinion. Firstly, and I hate to say this, but it looks like for now we're going to have to continue using fossil fuels for awhile yet. We do anyway so it doesn't matter what I say. Secondly, instead of ripping up the landscape for projects like an entire new transmission line system to fuel solar and wind projects in remote places, we should focus instead on reducing consumption bigtime, restoring and protecting forests and healthy farmland, and passive solar design for all new buildings, and other technologies that can be used on individual buildings, such as small waterwheels. Continue to use any solar panels that are still in an operation but stop new mining projects that involve environmental destruction for things like lithium. This is just an absolute bombshell, to our current way of life, because so many things we use are not just solar and wind powered but are things like computers and cell phones which depend on this and other hard to mine minerals. Popping another fantasy, Jensen points out that even trying to recycle these things is not realistic, because of, say, the high temperatures needed to melt the metals and the pollution produced in the process.
We must also bring our treatment of one another into the realm of caring, aiming to provide a healthy environment for all, not just a privileged few, and focus on interpersonal interactions rather than cold monetary valuations of people. In protecting nature, rather than imposing ourselves on it, we also protect our humanity.
There's an old saying, "No matter how far you got down the wrong road, you still need to turn around." To me, even though it's hugely difficult, the low hanging fruit here is simply pointing ourselves in a different direction as we proceed into the future. That different direction would be one that adopts some, certainly not all, but some, of the elements of the lifestyle that we now refer to as tribal or subsistence farming, etc. Lots of people have some ideas about how to get that started, such as in Ozzie Zehner’s Green Illusions, a precursor to Planet of the Humans. His proposals include re-zoning cities instead of putting houses in one area and shops in another, which forces people to drive even if they wanted to walk. Many communities tried elements of this in the 60’s and 70’s, some continuing to this day. One way or another, this project is enormous and detailed, but it’s a lot more affordable and realistic than placing all our efforts on a renewable energy transition. It’s time for another, larger try, without nitpicking against those who advocate for it. Certainly not when they are in a small minority, and experiencing the sort of dismissive attacks that Planet of the Humans and Green Illusions got.
by Cathy Seitz
It’s just the news you dreaded to hear. Turning to renewable energy—wind, solar, hydro, etc. might not actually improve the climate crisis. In fact, it may just add more layers to the damage we are doing to the natural world, without producing enough energy to halt our dependence on fossil fuels. This is the case right now and will continue worsening unless we rethink our whole way of life, according to three recent reports, the most recent being Bright Green Lies, a book by Derrick Jensen and two others. Our only hope is the one environmentalists used to nag us about— to drastically reduce our consumption.
We are not just facing a climate out of balance, but water imbalance and the near collapse of insect populations. Demonstrators frequently throng the streets, demanding that governments do more to address climate change. Yet the current popular solution—moving from fossil fuels to renewable energies like solar, wind, and biomass, largely fails to address the other two crises—water shortage and loss of pollinators and other species. In fact, crowding massive solar, wind, and biomass farms onto our already stressed wild areas actually damages the very resources that could ameliorate climate imbalance, such as forests, wild prairies, and healthy soils. This is especially when you calculate the (usually neglected) full picture, such as the additional mining, dams, and entirely new transmission lines, bordered with clearcuts, that are now planned.
A few years ago, I visited the town of Joshua Tree, near the beautiful Joshua Tree National Monument in California. At a farmers market there, I got into conversation with one of the locals. He told me that an enormous solar farm had been constructed in the area, and he was concerned about the impact it was having on the local wildlife. He mentioned the desert tortoise, as well as birds, which sometimes died in flight because of how the facility was constructed. He said that he would prefer to see a series of small local solar generating plants, built with a view of getting around these and other problems.
Another time, I visited the community of Arcata, in northern California, and there found an uproar over a proposed wind farm. Although locals had initially supported the proposal, they actively opposed it when they discovered it would involve 40 cement platforms, each several acres in size, to be placed on one of the county’s unique wild areas. After a number of packed town meetings, the project was defeated, mostly by environmentalists!
There is another alternative besides fossil fuels or “renewable” energy. A number of people have studied the effects if we were to a: drastically increase organic style agriculture and b: protect and restore trees and natural landscapes. They conclude that changing either forestry or farming alone would drastically reduce greenhouse gases. We’re talking large scale here, of course, and time would be needed to make these transitions. But as we were changing, improvements would be steady, and we are already facing a similar timescale with the idea of solar and wind transition. And the external effects, instead of damaging the landscape, would be hugely good.
But, you cry, surely we can do both. Restore ecosystems and do regenerative agriculture, and also transition to solar and wind. Unfortunately, when you factor in all of the inputs required to set up alternative energies, you realize that doing so would involve truly extensive landscape damage. The amount of planet we have left in natural forests and prairies is already challenged. Particularly as human communities expand and demand more of the “developed” world’s goods and services. The fossil fuel industry has left, and continues to leave, damage that will take decades to heal. If instead of commencing this healing, we continue to deforest (to fuel most biomass plants, for example), we lose the climate advantage of having the forests.
These are the points made in 2021, when Derrick Jensen and two others published Bright Green Lies, followed by a film. With a style which is actually readable, complete with withering jest, Jensen et al. have gathered most of the proposals for limiting greenhouse gases. They have fleshed out how those projects would impact the environment if you looked at all or most of the effects. They include solar, wind, batteries, transmission lines, hydro, biofuels, and more. These cumulative effects are so bad, that at least for large-scale projects, it appears they should not be built at all. I think the jury is still out for, say small-scale biofuels, wind, or hydropower, and perhaps solar, but some of that could be argued as well. (In this paper I discuss solar, wind, etc. collectively, as Jensen’s book makes clear, none is without serious drawbacks. See the book for details.)
I say hats off to Jensen for the four years it took for him and his two co-authors to put this work together. Collectively we owe them an enormous debt, and the responsible thing would be for us to re-envision the whole Green New Deal, and maybe our whole civilization, as they suggest. There are human cultures which live without the consumptive patterns of modern society, and we need to look seriously in their direction for inspiration on how to go forward. This message: that we need to turn to the earth itself and to those societies which have lived closest to it; is echoed in a number of recent books. I like Charles Eisenstein’s Climate, a New Story and Val Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass.
About 2 years ago, Michael Moore and friends published the film, Planet of the Humans online, which roundly criticized the solar and wind industries. Planet of the Humans evoked much backlash, even being pulled offline for a short time. While some of its details were a bit foggy, I thought the overall message, “There are aspects of this that aren’t good for the environment,” was very needed. On the political left, no-one else of consequence was pointing this out. Moore and the other producers said they were mainly trying to start a discussion. Few people wanted to talk. As I see it, while that film had a few poorly done spots, by contrast Jensen's Bright Green Lies (with a few exceptions) is well documented, detailed, and extensive in its look at the shift away from fossil fuels.
Here's my opinion. Firstly, and I hate to say this, but it looks like for now we're going to have to continue using fossil fuels for awhile yet. We do anyway so it doesn't matter what I say. Secondly, instead of ripping up the landscape for projects like an entire new transmission line system to fuel solar and wind projects in remote places, we should focus instead on reducing consumption bigtime, restoring and protecting forests and healthy farmland, and passive solar design for all new buildings, and other technologies that can be used on individual buildings, such as small waterwheels. Continue to use any solar panels that are still in an operation but stop new mining projects that involve environmental destruction for things like lithium. This is just an absolute bombshell, to our current way of life, because so many things we use are not just solar and wind powered but are things like computers and cell phones which depend on this and other hard to mine minerals. Popping another fantasy, Jensen points out that even trying to recycle these things is not realistic, because of, say, the high temperatures needed to melt the metals and the pollution produced in the process.
We must also bring our treatment of one another into the realm of caring, aiming to provide a healthy environment for all, not just a privileged few, and focus on interpersonal interactions rather than cold monetary valuations of people. In protecting nature, rather than imposing ourselves on it, we also protect our humanity.
There's an old saying, "No matter how far you got down the wrong road, you still need to turn around." To me, even though it's hugely difficult, the low hanging fruit here is simply pointing ourselves in a different direction as we proceed into the future. That different direction would be one that adopts some, certainly not all, but some, of the elements of the lifestyle that we now refer to as tribal or subsistence farming, etc. Lots of people have some ideas about how to get that started, such as in Ozzie Zehner’s Green Illusions, a precursor to Planet of the Humans. His proposals include re-zoning cities instead of putting houses in one area and shops in another, which forces people to drive even if they wanted to walk. Many communities tried elements of this in the 60’s and 70’s, some continuing to this day. One way or another, this project is enormous and detailed, but it’s a lot more affordable and realistic than placing all our efforts on a renewable energy transition. It’s time for another, larger try, without nitpicking against those who advocate for it. Certainly not when they are in a small minority, and experiencing the sort of dismissive attacks that Planet of the Humans and Green Illusions got.