BY KERRY JACKSON
Any time there's an oil spill on
the water, the media are filled with photos and videos of crude-soaked
birds. The coverage is the cue for the self-appointed environmentalist
defenders of wildlife to wring their hands and furrow their brows.
If
it weren't for those greedy oil companies and voracious Westerners who
consume more energy than they should, they imply, these crimes against
nature would never happen.
The alternative to evil fossil fuels,
these folk say, are "clean" renewable energy sources, such as wind and
solar. The environmentalists want us to believe they are more gentle to
nature. But are they?
Using birds as the standard, let's examine this assertion.
In latest U.S. oil spill off the coast of California, 161 birds died, as of the most recent count.
Now, compare this toll to the damage wrought by wind and solar power.
Estimates for bird deaths by wind turbine run from 100,000 a year (the National Research Council) to 300,000 (American Bird Conservancy). Bloomberg News puts the toll at 573,000 birds in 2012. At the high end of the estimates, that's well more than 1,000 birds chopped to death each day.
Meanwhile,
as many as 28,000 birds are killed each year — that's one every two
minutes — by the Ivanpah solar plant in the Mojave Desert, according to
the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
. Ivanpah focuses more than 300,000 mirrors on three 459-foot towers,
generating heat of up to 800 degrees — enough to fry birds that happen
to fly by.
To be fair, the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico
did do substantial damage to fowl in the region. The U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service reports that 2,303 "visibly oiled" dead birds were collected "within the Deepwater Horizon/BP incident impact area."
But
oil spills the size of the BP accident don't happen every year. Deaths
caused by wind turbines and solar farms, however, don't stop. The Daily Caller reports that "in the time since the 2010 BP oil spill, some 2.9 million birds have been killed by wind turbines."
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