The Climate Religion Is Endangering Us All

It’s not easy being green, but it also doesn’t make a lot of common sense.

Climate change has become a religion of sorts, and its followers go to great lengths to ensure everyone knows it. Lately, however, we’re witnessing that the major challenge to ‘green’ ventures is coming from…green groups.

It may sound counterintuitive, but the trend is playing out coast to coast and around the globe. [bold, links added]

Let’s start in California, a state whose ideologies are so ‘green’ that it banned combustion-engine personal vehicle sales after 2035.

Yet, protests from environmental organizations and residents in general against wind and solar installations are commonplace.

In one example, saving tortoises is more important to these groups than their blessed 500-megawatt solar project in the Mojave Desert. Keep in mind that these same groups have fought for years for California to embrace sun panels over common sense.

Moving further west, Hawaii, a state which has mandated 100% renewable power by 2045, saw uproar from Oahu residents when it tried to permit an eight-tower wind project in 2019.

In my home of Alaska, a project that would have allowed Arctic ice and snow to be used as a reflective source to ultimately generate power was lambasted by indigenous and environmental groups earlier this year.

While the concept proposed by Arctic ice is untested, the concern stated by those groups was that the methods used would harm outdoor activities. 

And yet, the green groups aren’t done.

[Alaska’s] governor held a three-day conference earlier this year, focused on how Alaska could lead the nation in providing domestic supplies of critical and strategic minerals, as well as advance his stated goal of providing up to 80% of Southcentral Alaska’s electricity and heating demands via renewable energy by 2040.

While most called the conference a success, environmental groups chided the gathering as “off the rails.”

For decades, wind and solar power have been sacred artifacts of the green religion. However, as communities look at the real cost, they begin to push back.

Earlier this year, Reuters noted the widespread concerns from rural residents over solar projects:

“As solar developers propose new, often sprawling projects in places like Kansas, Maine, Texas, Virginia and elsewhere, local governments and activist groups are seeking to block them and often succeeding. They cite reasons ranging from aesthetics that would harm property values to fears about health and safety, and loss of arable land, farm culture, or wildlife habitat.”

They’re not alone.

In Norway, the 60-megawatt wind project on Frøya Island was scrapped in 2019 due to fierce public opposition. Germany had plans to supply most of its energy from renewables, and spent hundreds of billions to do so.

As a result, the wind turbines themselves became so unpopular that a term was derived for them: Verspargelung, roughly translated as “pollution with giant asparagus sticks.”

If the production of green projects is insufficiently green for the eco-Left, then we shouldn’t take anything they say seriously.

Remember, these are the very same groups who demand we use these “solutions” and then fight them tooth and nail.

The doomsday predictions about the imminent ending of the world, the urgent need to transition away from traditional power sources that are affordable and reliable, and the need to buy into their zealotry around all things climate. It’s all a load of hooey. The religion of climate change is overwrought.

Let’s hope people wake up before it’s too late.

Read rest at RealClearEnergy