The Ecological and Climatological Incoherence of "Green" Energy Permitting "Reform"

It makes no sense.

This morning I read in Willamette Week, an alternative weekly in my neighboring state of Oregon, that a PAC called Clean Energy for Oregon recently doled out nearly $100,000 to lawmakers deemed crucial to a bill that would remove state oversight of new energy development on Oregon’s federal lands. For many of the the legislators, these “clean energy checks” were the largest they’d ever gotten, and all house members voted, predictably, “yes.” It’s unlikely that any of them, all Democrats, are aware that they’re endangering the one aspect of the climate they have any real control or responsibility over as state-level legislators—that provided by grace of their state’s public and private lands.

What Happened? We used to be friends.

Land is climate. This has been long known and recognized by a large body of science.1 But unfortunately, that knowledge has been sidelined by a climate narrative oriented exclusively to a globally-averaged, CO2-only, technical-solutions perspective. The result is that legislators everywhere are making land-use decisions based on fundamentally incomplete information. We are embarking on a climate-damaging program to save the climate and no one seems to see the irony.

That is probably the most frustrating thing about confronting this sort of infrastructure. One has to articulate a fairly complex scientific explanation in the midst of what is feverishly rushed forward as an emergency with no tolerance for proper public review. In Oregon, it’s an emergency now greased with one hundred thousand dollars. How do you slip a complex scientific explanation through that?

I suppose here I should make that detailed scientific explanation, but I’m not going to. Partly, because I already have through numerous posts on this site and elsewhere, and think it will be simpler to leave some notes and references at the end. But mostly because I shouldn’t have to. This is climate-education work that should have, and could have, been done decades ago.

But there’s another reason. Sometimes I tire of arguing for living things and places based on what they do for the climate, and therefore, us. It’s a utilitarian view of nature I find soul deadening, but which we always find ourselves enmeshed in when talking about the climate. I don’t think it’s a healthy trend, nor is it a healthy way to think about the living world around us. Should we just let AI make these choices for us, based on some sort of rational equation? Do we not have a relationship with these lands? Does not everything living upon them depend utterly on our willingness to let them live?

Let’s be clear. Global warming is a real problem, but it’s not what’s causing the extinction crises. According to a recent study by the organization NatureServe entitled “Biodiversity in the United States is in crisis,” the demise of nature is mostly due to “land conversion,” with 40% of animals in the US headed for extinction, along with 34% of the nation’s plants. Of America’s ecosystems, 41% “are at risk of collapse.” Non-carbon based energy, not having energy-dense carbon as it’s fuel, requires massive amounts of land to provide the same energy. This is no secret.

The matter now turns to the Oregon State Senate, where the Senate President and Senate Majority leader have both received money from Clean Energy for Oregon. And again, I doubt very much that either of the two Democrats are aware that the infrastructure they are voting on will do climatic as well as ecological damage to their state and constituents. But Steven Pedery, Conservation Director for Oregon Wild, still sees a 50% chance of defeating it. Those are decent odds, especially if you put the climatic role of land on the scales. I hope the people of Oregon will waste no time doing just that.

---

Notes and References

1. For instance, in 1979 the World Meteorological Organization hosted it’s first World Climate Congress. The first of 28 papers in the report, under a discussion of “the impacts that are of the most relevance to the subject of climate,” places “the transformation of the land surface of the planet by forest clearance, the ploughing up of the steppes and great plains, land reclamation, etc” at the top of the list. Now we must add “green” energy infrastructure.

2. Here I provide some more explanation, with a list of further resources.

3. This series, about the remarkable Spanish meteorologist, Millan Millan, is my most thorough exploration. You will learn how “water begets water, soil is a womb, and vegetation a midwife.” You’ll also learn that around the time when the IPCC was created, another organization was created called the International Geosphere Biosphere Program, which dealt with the land/climate link. However, it was funded at one tenth of the IPCC, and shuttered in 2015.