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The Endangered Species Act And Wind Power: A Rule, Or More Of A Guideline?

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There is a great scene in “Ghostbusters” in which Dr. Peter Venkman (Bill Murray) is being seduced by the possessed Dana (Sigourney Weaver).  At first, Venkman says “I make it a rule never to get involved with possessed people.”  But when Dana becomes more passionate in her advances, Venkman goes soft and says, “Actually, it’s more of a guideline than a rule…”.

Where protecting birds under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA) is concerned, it appears the Obama Administration and some of its supporters in the environmental community have undergone a similar seduction.

We’ve had more than a small kerfuffle in the media this week about the fact that the wind power industry has for years sought, and the Obama Administration has granted, exemptions from federal regulations.  Specifically, the administration has looked the other way on the fact that wind turbines are killing all manner of bird species that are protected under the ESA and/or the MBTA.  It seems that the Fish and Wildlife Service has for years willfully refused to act when birds – including Bald Eagles, Golden Eagles and even the highly endangered California Condor – die horrible deaths by flying into the enormous blades of 300 foot-tall wind turbines that litter broad swaths of landscapes in many parts of the country. Even worse, the Administration has refused to act while at the same time filing civil and even criminal charges against fossil fuel companies that experience listed bird deaths on their properties.

The double standard in government and within much of the environmentalist community is somewhat breathtaking.  The March issue of the peer-reviewed Wildlife Society Bulletin estimated that over 573,000 birds are killed by the nation’s wind farms each year, including around 83,000 “hunting birds”, mostly raptors like eagles, hawks and falcons.  Of course, getting to precise figures is essentially impossible since many wind companies are exempt not only from penalties normally associated with such bird kills, but even from reporting requirements enforced on other industries.

Contrast this policy of looking the other way with what happens to fossil-fuel companies when birds die near or on their operations.  A May 15 report by the Associated Press details the damage:

The Obama administration has refused to accept that cost when the fossil-fuel industry is to blame. The BP oil company was fined $100 million for killing and harming migratory birds during the 2010 Gulf oil spill. And PacifiCorp, which operates coal plants in Wyoming, paid more than $10.5 million in 2009 for electrocuting 232 eagles along power lines and at its substations.

Tim Eicher, a former enforcement agent for the US Fish & Wildlife Service, sums up the bizarrely bifurcated policy this way:  “What it boils down to is this:  If you electrocute an eagle, that is bad, but if you chop it to pieces, that is OK.”

Ouch.

Another passage from the same story contains more than a smidgen of irony:

"We are all responsible for protecting our wildlife, even the largest of corporations," Colorado U.S. Attorney David M. Gaouette said in 2009 when announcing Exxon Mobil Corp. had pleaded guilty and would pay $600,000 for killing 85 birds in five states, including Wyoming.

Well, apparently we’re all responsible, that is, unless we’re part of Big Wind.  Then we’re seemingly not responsible at all.

Many in government and in the environmental community attempt to justify all of this rank hypocrisy with the rationale that Climate Change is a bigger threat to endangered birds in the long run, so we have to build more wind power.  In other words, to save the birds, we must kill millions of birds.  Seriously, that’s the logic behind this.

The truth is that Big Wind and its supporters know that wind power is not competitive in the marketplace today without heavy, direct government subsidization, and that wind farms could never survive (even with the subsidies they receive) were they held to the same monetary and criminal liabilities to which other fuel sources are held.  That’s the reality here, all specious talking points aside.

But at its base, what this all exposes is not some sort of competition between wind and fossil fuels to see who can get fined the most, but the utter hypocrisy about how the animal protection laws are enforced.  The base question is this:  Do these birds listed under the ESA or MBTA deserve and need the protections supposedly afforded them under those laws, which add so much cost to everyone’s daily lives, or not?

If the answer is ‘yes’ then government needs to actually protect the birds uniformly, across all industries and other segments of society.  If the answer is ‘no’ - that some of these listings are in fact made under very tortured reasoning to make some of us feel good about ourselves, for birds that are not really “endangered” under any rational definition of that word - then de-listings and changes in the listing process are probably in order.

Such selective enforcement of the laws is not the way government is supposed to work in this country.  The birds either need to be protected, or they don’t.  If they do, everyone needs to be responsible.