I recently came across an article in the Washington Post (click here for article) which points out the dangers that windmills pose to endangered birds and the lack of action taken by the government in response. While it is interesting to consider the unexpected ways in which human activity can negatively affect wildlife and to what extent companies should be held liable for it, this was not an article written by an environmentalist looking to prevent further harm to wildlife. The main purpose of the article was clearly to generate outrage over the Obama administration’s persecution of oil and coal companies for lost wildlife and the apparent double standard held for “clean energy” companies. Contrary to the author’s assertions, however, close analysis of the framing and wording in the article, as well as the misleading use of statistics, reveals that perhaps in reality fossil fuel companies are being treated better than they deserve by both the Washington Post article AND by the government.
In the Washington Post article, oil companies such as Exxon are framed as responsible and cooperative with an expensive government lawsuit over the loss of 85 endangered eagles in 5 states. A quote from Exxon’s CEO demonstrates gracious acceptance of financial responsibility for the company’s actions. The article then points out that the wind power industry has not encountered any lawsuits for the damages it has caused to wildlife, despite the deaths of about 500,000 birds that fly into spinning turbines across the country in one year. The article points out that instead of fines, the wind power industry receives $1 billion in tax breaks given by the government. On the surface, this information alone indicates a definite favoritism for wind power and other types of green energy by the United States government and its chief, Barack Obama.
The problem with this conclusion is that it is the result of incomplete information and misleading numbers. For starters, while the article states that the wind power industry receives a whopping $1 billion in tax breaks each year from Uncle Sam, it fails to mention that fossil fuel companies continue to receive more than $50 billion dollars in subsidies and tax breaks annually, despite their large profits in recent years and the growing concern over climate change. This information alone severely debunks the perception that “clean energy” companies are financially favored by the government. There is also a major problem with the numbers offered for assessing the damages to wildlife caused by windmills versus the damages to wildlife caused by oil companies. For comparison, the reader only has the number of birds killed by all wind turbines in the entire country in an entire year, to compare with only the number of eagles killed in one region because of one oil company in an unspecified period of time. Perhaps the most important fault of the article, though, is that it considers the environmental damage caused by different types of energy companies solely in terms of the deaths of birds which come in direct contact with energy plants. In reality, the damages to wildlife which cause many people to want to move away from fossil fuels are not primarily those resulting from the physical interactions that animals have with waste or drilling sites, but the more prevalent indirect negative short- and long- term affects on both wildlife and humans of air and water pollution and carbon emissions, which wind turbines produce none of.
Clouded by biased portrayals and bad statistics, the actual point of the article becomes slightly difficult to determine, but can be refuted in any case. If the point of the article is that wind energy is no less harmful to wildlife than fossil fuels, this judgement cannot be conclusively made by examining only deaths among one species because of direct contact with energy plants. The number of birds killed in a year by oil companies (even if that number had in fact been included in the article) is a tiny fraction of the damages to the planet, wildlife, and the human population caused by the fossil fuel industry. It is more likely that the author intended to argue that the government should be more aggressive in holding “clean energy” companies and fossil fuel companies “fairly and equally” accountable for the damages they cause to the environment. In that case, fossil fuel companies had better be prepared to pay increasingly extensive fines for the shrinking polar ice caps and therefore losses in arctic wildlife, the rising oceans and dilution of saltwater and therefore losses in aquatic wildlife, damages associated with more extreme weather, countless plants and animals killed by toxic chemicals poured into the atmosphere and water supply, as well as illnesses in humans as a result of the same pollution. Be careful what you wish for.
Careful analysis refutes the position of this article that green energy receive financial favoritism from the government, but growing concerns over the high environmental costs of fossil fuels suggests that perhaps it should.
Reason For Progress 