Time To Save the Right Whales From the Green Left?

[Geee]

Real Clear Policy

There was a time back in the 1960’s and 70’s when a cause like “Save the Whales” was the exclusive domain of the political left. 

But as Bob Dylan might say, “the times they are a changing”.

Three major “conservative” organizations – the National Legal Policy Center, Heartland Institute, and my organization, the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow – recently filed a major lawsuit in a Washington, D.C. federal court to save the Right Whale from facing potential oblivion.

Why aren’t the larger Green groups, unlike the grassroots ones, rallying around the efforts of these organizations to save Right whales?  Good question.  Perhaps it’s because the threat to the remaining 350 of them doesn’t come from Russian, Norwegian, or Japanese whaling vessels, as it did back in the 70’s.  Rather, it is from so-called “Green energy” in the form of offshore wind.  Right whales are being threatened by the Biden Administration’s fast-track plans to hurriedly place 30,000 MW of wind power generation off the Eastern coast, and doing so without the proper sort of environmental impact assessment they might otherwise perform for, say, offshore oil.  

The collective decision by our outfits to take the issue of whale protection to Court came after two years of futile attempts to get the Biden Administration to listen. Offshore wind development threatens the nearly extinct North Atlantic Right Whale in various ways, and the government refuses to investigate.

The two agencies which share responsibility for making sure wind development does not harm whales include the Interior Department's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), which oversees building wind facilities, and the Commerce Department's National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS or NOAA Fisheries), which enforces the various laws to protect whales. Neither seems intent on doing their job.

In issuing its “biological opinion” last September, for instance, NMFS only examined the impact that each of these projects individually and in isolation would have on the North Atlantic right whale. The agency did not, as it should have, issue a comprehensive and cumulative analysis examining the combined harm which all the projects, together, would inflict on the whales during their annual migration path.

If it had done so, it would have uncovered that dangerous noises generated from several projects combine to create much louder and more dangerous circumstances for marine mammals than noises coming from just a single project. In fact, impacts can combine over time as well, such as when migrating Right Whales are repeatedly forced to go around a dozen wind facilities into heavily trafficked shipping lanes. The risk of being struck by a ship then becomes ten times greater than for a single project.

[SDwaters]

Wind energy company pleads guilty after at least 150 eagles killed in U.S. (nbcnews.com)

It isn't just whales!!

[Geee]

1 hour ago, SDwaters said:

Wind energy company pleads guilty after at least 150 eagles killed in U.S. (nbcnews.com)

It isn't just whales!!

maybe if we can prove that the eagles and whales were gay or trans we can get some protests going 

[Valin]

@Geee

Quote

Why aren’t the larger Green groups, unlike the grassroots ones, rallying around the efforts of these organizations to save Right whales?  Good question.

Maybe when they were founded they were about "Saving The Environment. You could make a goo argument that The Environment needed saving. That Was Then...This is Now. Now they are wholly owned  by the Progressives.

[Geee]

Virginia residents say vibrations from construction of offshore wind project causing cracks in walls

Residents living near in an upcoming, major offshore wind project say say the developer’s activities are creating a lot of noise, and they weren’t told to expect it.

WTKR reported Sunday that the residents in a Virginia Beach neighborhood met with Dominion Energy about the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project, and the meeting didn’t ease their concerns.

John Knight, a resident of the neighborhood, told WTKR that the developer never warned that his “house is going to be shaking for almost a year.” Had he known, he said he would have opposed the project.

This construction, the residents say, is going on day and night, with some of the vibrations from the development being so loud, it’s causing cracks in their walls.