from CFACT
Craig Luck
For decades, environmentalists have raised dubious but often successful objections to blockades of mines, pipelines, nuclear power and oil and gas operations.
Now, as Shakespeare's Hamlet put it, they “were reaping the consequences,” referring to the small explosive devices used in siege warfare.
Ironically, the legal and regulatory barriers that the Greens have erected and deployed against the fossil fuel companies they oppose are now exploding in their faces, impeding and impeding their beloved solar and wind projects. More poetically, “little guy” environmentalists often insist that they care deeply about who wields the weapons.
Energy expert and journalist Robert Bryce notes that through September this year, farm families, small rural communities and Native American tribes have rejected or restricted 35 wind energy projects and 58 solar projects. Since 2015, these “little guys” have blocked as many as 735 “renewable energy” projects in the United States.
Rural and coastal communities are aware of these facilities will be in their backyard. They clearly don't want them to impact farmland and habitat, damage the landscape, hit property values, kill birds and other wildlife, and create significant fire and toxic gas risks from lithium-ion batteries.
Who can blame them? The bad news for the Greens is that these locals are challenging their beloved “climate-friendly” projects, using environmentalists' own legal roadmap… and winning.
In Idaho, local preservationists oppose the Lava Ridge Wind Project, which would install hundreds of 700-foot-tall turbines within sight of the Minidoka National Historic Site, the site of a World War II Japanese internment camp. They were joined by local officials, the Idaho Legislature, the governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general and two U.S. senators in asking the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to repeal the program.
The unprecedented pushback convinced a nearby county to implement a moratorium on wind and solar farm construction that the Biden-Harris administration hopes to make part of its climate agenda.
In neighboring Oregon, Native Americans have filed a lawsuit challenging a deepwater offshore wind project that arguably makes no energy, economic, engineering or environmental sense. Even liberal Gov. Tina Kotek has now changed her stance on offshore wind, and the October auction was postponed because no companies were interested in bidding.
In California, local officials and landowners opposed the proposed 320-megawatt Seguro battery storage facility after a series of battery fires in electric vehicles, battery factories and storage facilities.
Heading east, after a decade-long legal battle, Oklahoma's Osage Nation forced wind energy developers to dismantle and dismantle dozens of turbines because they didn't get prior permission to install the turbines and power lines on Native land. Lease or License.
In Wisconsin, the Engelstad family and other locals are fighting the Koshkonon solar project near Christiana, Wisconsin. It will cover 6,400 acres (10 square miles) of prime agricultural land and place a 667-megawatt-hour battery storage system hundreds of feet from the elementary school.
On the Atlantic coast, multiple groups helped cancel the Ocean Wind 1 and 2 projects (New Jersey), putting pressure on the North and South Atlantic Coasts (New Jersey) and bleak prospects for Bonito Wind (Maryland), and subject offshore wind and other offshore wind projects off the coast of Virginia to lawsuits for harming endangered whales.
Hundreds of miles of transmission lines — including the Grain Belt Express (Kansas-Missouri-Illinois-Indiana) and Piedmont Reliability (Pennsylvania-Maryland-Virginia) — also face strong resistance.
The list of projects delayed, canceled or blocked is endless.
Local residents, developers, regulators, permitting agencies and insurance companies are concerned about the impact of so-called “green” energy. They must consider major issues that have received little scrutiny in the past. They have to solve problems like what to do with thousands of solar panels or hundreds of wind turbines that wear out in 20 years… or may be destroyed by hail, tornadoes or hurricanes. They have to figure out who pays for demolition, removal and disposal, and whose backyards these billions of pounds of trash go to.
For example, Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird recently sued a waste disposal company, alleging that the company failed to cut, transport, recycle or otherwise properly dispose of 1,300 broken and retired wind turbine blades. The blades are stacked at multiple locations across the state.
As green companies collapse, environmentalists must face a tough test – they no longer have the public's trust. They must make their case to state and local officials, who will decide, in Shakespeare's words, whether the green energy program “exists.” This may become more difficult.
This article originally appeared in NewsMax
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