Thread by @shellenberger

The wind industry says it isn't killing whales, but it is. New boat traffic is colliding with whales. And high-decibel sonar is separating whale mothers from their calves, sending them into harm's way. Our new documentary, which lays out the evidence, is now free to watch.

This ground-breaking documentary could save the North Atlantic right whales from extinction. Please consider getting involved and making a donation to support our work. LFG!!!

saverightwhales.org

The mainstream news media is lying about this. Why? Because the wind industry paid them millions of dollars to.

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The politicians are lying about this. Why? Because the wind industry paid them to

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The environmentalists are lying about this. Why? Because the wind industry paid them to.

Since the passage of the 1973 Endangered Species Act, environmentalists have fought for strict protections for endangered species. They have demanded that the government apply what is known as the “precautionary principle,” which states that if there is any risk that human activity will make a species extinct, it should be illegal.

And yet here we are, on the 50th anniversary of the Endangered Species Act, watching the whole of the environmental movement — from the Audubon Society and the National Wildlife Federation to scientific groups like the Woods Hole Institute, New England Aquarium, and Mystic Aquarium — betray the precautionary principle by risking the extinction of the North Atlantic right whale.

The cause of this environmental betrayal is massive industrial wind energy projects off the East Coast of the U.S. The wind turbine blades are the length of a football field. Sitting atop giant poles, they will reach three times higher than the Statue of Liberty. The towers will be directly inside the critical ocean habitat for the North Atlantic right whale.

There are only 340 of the whales left, down from 348 just one year earlier. So many North Atlantic right whales are killed by man-made factors that there have been no documented cases of any of them dying of natural causes in decades. Their average life expectancy has declined from a century to 45 years. A single additional unnatural and unnecessary death could risk the loss of the entire species.

Surveying for, building, and operating industrial wind projects could harm or kill whales, according to the U.S. government’s own science.

The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has given the wind industry 11 “incidental harassment authorizations,” or permits to harass hundreds of whales, including 169 critically endangered right whales.

Scientists representing many of the same environmental groups supporting the industrial wind energy projects wrote in a 2021 letter that “the North Atlantic right whale population cannot withstand any additional stressors; any potential interruption of foraging behavior may lead to population-level effects and is of critical concern.”

Industrial wind projects “could have population-level effects on an already endangered and stressed species,” concluded the NOAA scientist Sean Hayes. What are “population-level effects?” In a word, extinction.

Why are environmental groups risking the extinction of the North Atlantic right whale with this massive industrial wind project? The ostensible reason is climate change. The project developers say they will produce emission-free electricity for 7 million homes.

But wind energy in the U.S. Northeast will often require 100% natural gas backup to provide power for people on days without wind. And yet the U.S. Northeast has in recent years experienced natural gas shortages because climate change groups led by @billmckibben and as well as Sierra Club and NRDC, have halted pipelines, forcing states to, increasingly, burn far dirtier petroleum during the winter.

And all of the same green groups have been successfully shutting down nuclear plants on the East Coast, including Pilgrim in Massachusetts in 2019 and Indian Point in New York in 2021. Unlike wind turbines, nuclear plants do not need fossil fuels as their backup.

Why, then, are environmentalists supporting wind turbine installation up and down the East Coast? It wasn’t clear to at least one conservationist. “It was strange to see environmental groups, whose focus is on protecting wildlife, seeking to industrialize critical habitats,” said @LinowesLisa of the Save Right Whales Coalition.

And so Linowes set out to investigate why that might be. What she discovered shocked her: many conservation organizations supporting the projects had taken money from the wind industry, a clear conflict of interest. “We were upset to discover that the wind industry had bought off so many environmental and scientific organizations,” said Linowes.

Wind energy companies and their foundations have donated nearly $4.7 million to at least three dozen donations to major environmental organizations. Linowes has made public a report and a database documenting the conflicts of interest she discovered.

— The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, a granting organization, took up to $1 million from wind energy companies Avangrid and Shell, and then distributed it to other environmental groups. In August 2020, the National Audubon Society received a $200,000 grant from the New England Forest and Rivers Fund.

— The same year, the Nature Conservancy received a $165,218 grant from the New England Forest and Rivers Fund. The Nature Conservancy has supported offshore wind since at least 2021.

— NJ Audubon has partnered with wind farm developer Atlantic Shores, a joint venture between Shell Oil and EDF Renewables. Ocean Wind, another wind energy developer, has sponsored NJ Audubon’s World Series of Birding event multiple times.

The wind industry has also made hefty donations to scientific organizations:

— Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute received a donation of $500,000 from Ørsted in or after 2018. Woods Hole has endorsed offshore wind since at least 2019.

— The New England Aquarium received a donation pledge of $250,000 in 2018 from Bay State Wind. In 2019, Vineyard Wind donated an undisclosed amount to the Aquarium. Similarly, in 2020 offshore wind developer Equinor, was cited as a donor in the Aquarium’s annual report. The Aquarium has supported offshore wind since at least 2021.

— In October 2020, Mystic Aquarium featured an exhibit promoting offshore wind. In June 2021, Ørsted and Revolution Wind donated $1,250,000 to Mystic Aquarium to create new pro-offshore wind exhibits but also to research the effects of offshore wind turbines on marine mammals and sea turtles.

Even though NOAA’s own top experts say the impact of wind energy on the North Atlantic right whale cannot be mitigated, the draft joint strategy of NOAA and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is aimed at doing precisely that. The word “mitigation” is used 45 times in the document. But if Hayes and his colleagues are correct, those mitigations won’t be enough to prevent extinction.

Why, in the end, have environmental groups thrown their own precautionary principle to the wind? Much of it is due to their view that wind energy is needed to solve climate change. But another reason is simply that they were paid.

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To learn more, including about the corruption of so-called environmental groups, please visit: