3 ms·

I suppose the flip side is that we choose not to build solar, wind, or invest in nuclear and all tortoises die.

solardev 3y ago
What if there were solar sites with no endangered animals? Acres of rangeland, abandoned malls, warehouse rooftops, aqueducts, lakes... I dunno if it's really an either or. Endangered species are often endangered because of extreme habitat loss, which means by definition there's not a lot of land left for them to live on, which means most projects won't intersect them. Of course the connection isn't that basic (desert is good for both tortoises and solar farms) but it does suggest one has more flexibility than the other. What percentage of utility scale renewables projects are blocked by endangered species? One recent study suggests environmental impacts are a source of opposition in half of the studied projects: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421522001471#fig3 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030142152... That's a lot, but doesn't necessarily mean it was the only (or primary) source of opposition. A lot of these bigger projects have to undergo environmental review via federal (NEPA) and state (CEQA) processes, which are expensive and slow (by design, to ensure their validity) and many projects stall when developers move on to locales with laxer rules and neighbors -- essentially giving up before the environmental impacts could be fully analyzed. My underlying point is that these things are rarely black and white, and there may be valid reasons to consider each project on a case by case basis. However, there might also be a valid reason to overhaul these laws to allow weighting climate priorities against individual protected species. If so, though, that should be very carefully and rarely done... once we lose those, they're never coming back. We can always find alternate energy sources/sites if we're willing to pay more. No amount of money will bring back extinct species (yet).
wernercd 3y ago
Or, the world continues on even if it is a little bit warmer. No proof that "all tortoises die" this side of a meteorite or nuclear war. Dooms Day Prophecies have a wierd way of being bullshit just like the religions that surround them. IE: 100+ years of climate change and the 4 horses of Global Warming, Global Cooling, Acid Rain, 12 years left. The real problem with 'green' solutions is the mountains of unrecyclable waste created after raping the earth to make the 'green' batteries, wind blades and solar panels that end up in land fills. Not real green but at least people are getting power and making money on the 'investments'.
roughly 3y ago
I get your meaning, but I'm not sure that the desert tortoise specifically stands to lose by either global warming or the collapse of human civilization.
- l33t7332273 3y ago
  Not to be too aloof, but why should we care too much about if the desert tortoise stands to win or lose if we’re doing what’s necessary to save our civilization?
  - roughly 3y ago
    Well, because we’ve discovered time and again that when we fuck up ecosystems, it’s bad for us, too. Should we care specifically about the desert tortoise above other species? Probably not. Should we be cautious about taking actions that have long ranging future consequences, such as obliterating at least one species? Probably yes. It’s not so much that the desert tortoise is of particular concern, it’s more that we’re so bad at tending to the one and only livable planet realistically available to us that we keep rendering it uninhabitable for species that have the same basic vital needs as us that should be cause for reflection. I’ll note as an aside that as we expand our bioengineering capabilities, the stock of genetic resources we’re drawing on as our toolkit is exactly the biodiversity we’re rapidly depleting, so even beyond the warm fuzzies of not rendering entire species extinct and the basic awareness of how finite and bounded our little bubble of cosmic survivability is, it seems like a waste to keep throwing away the library of useful genetics that took a couple billion years to furnish the first time.

What if there were solar sites with no endangered animals? Acres of rangeland, abandoned malls, warehouse rooftops, aqueducts, lakes... I dunno if it's really an either or. Endangered species are often endangered because of extreme habitat loss, which means by definition there's not a lot of land left for them to live on, which means most projects won't intersect them. Of course the connection isn't that basic (desert is good for both tortoises and solar farms) but it does suggest one has more flexibility than the other. What percentage of utility scale renewables projects are blocked by endangered species? One recent study suggests environmental impacts are a source of opposition in half of the studied projects: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421522001471#fig3 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030142152... That's a lot, but doesn't necessarily mean it was the only (or primary) source of opposition. A lot of these bigger projects have to undergo environmental review via federal (NEPA) and state (CEQA) processes, which are expensive and slow (by design, to ensure their validity) and many projects stall when developers move on to locales with laxer rules and neighbors -- essentially giving up before the environmental impacts could be fully analyzed. My underlying point is that these things are rarely black and white, and there may be valid reasons to consider each project on a case by case basis. However, there might also be a valid reason to overhaul these laws to allow weighting climate priorities against individual protected species. If so, though, that should be very carefully and rarely done... once we lose those, they're never coming back. We can always find alternate energy sources/sites if we're willing to pay more. No amount of money will bring back extinct species (yet).

wernercd 3y ago

Or, the world continues on even if it is a little bit warmer. No proof that "all tortoises die" this side of a meteorite or nuclear war. Dooms Day Prophecies have a wierd way of being bullshit just like the religions that surround them. IE: 100+ years of climate change and the 4 horses of Global Warming, Global Cooling, Acid Rain, 12 years left. The real problem with 'green' solutions is the mountains of unrecyclable waste created after raping the earth to make the 'green' batteries, wind blades and solar panels that end up in land fills. Not real green but at least people are getting power and making money on the 'investments'.

roughly 3y ago

I get your meaning, but I'm not sure that the desert tortoise specifically stands to lose by either global warming or the collapse of human civilization.

l33t7332273 3y ago
Not to be too aloof, but why should we care too much about if the desert tortoise stands to win or lose if we’re doing what’s necessary to save our civilization?
- roughly 3y ago
  Well, because we’ve discovered time and again that when we fuck up ecosystems, it’s bad for us, too. Should we care specifically about the desert tortoise above other species? Probably not. Should we be cautious about taking actions that have long ranging future consequences, such as obliterating at least one species? Probably yes. It’s not so much that the desert tortoise is of particular concern, it’s more that we’re so bad at tending to the one and only livable planet realistically available to us that we keep rendering it uninhabitable for species that have the same basic vital needs as us that should be cause for reflection. I’ll note as an aside that as we expand our bioengineering capabilities, the stock of genetic resources we’re drawing on as our toolkit is exactly the biodiversity we’re rapidly depleting, so even beyond the warm fuzzies of not rendering entire species extinct and the basic awareness of how finite and bounded our little bubble of cosmic survivability is, it seems like a waste to keep throwing away the library of useful genetics that took a couple billion years to furnish the first time.