“Europe Sacrificing Ancient Forests for Energy'' is a damning expose of the unintended consequences of a subsidy developed and promoted by the Green movement that does actual harm to nature. By some means of convoluted logic the European Union considers wood to be a renewable energy source because the carbon it puts into the air is recycled back into the wood of growing trees. Subsidies for wood have made its energy participation greater than wind and solar combined and is proudly noted by the EU as progress in reaching environmentally sound climate goals. Apparently the New York Times article caused a rethink over the lunacy of subsidising the raping of beautiful habitats of tremendous biodiversity to make wood pellets to fuel home furnaces. “Cutting down forests for energy use is neither sustainable, nor does it help with our energy independence,” said Tiemo Woelken, a German member of the European Parliament who supported ending the subsidies. But there is an energy crisis and so Europe’s version of the burning of the Amazon rainforests will continue.
Years ago Matt Ridley criticized Britain for defining wood pellets as a renewable form of energy, just one not so friendly to a Woodpecker’s habitat pinched from a California forest he argued. The clinching example he used for the idiocy of clear cutting wood for energy was a satellite shot of the Island of Hispaniola with Haiti on one side and the Dominican Republic on the other. One country was brown and the other green delineated by a clear crisp border. One country burned every piece of wood that could be found and the other subsidized the use of propane gas to save its forests. His point being that modern fuels have a place in saving the ecosystems of large swathes of geography for biodiversity.
John Muir the founder of the Sierra Club must be turning over in his grave with the thought of his beloved Muir Woods being whittled down to pellets for fuel. The Sierra Club is seriously out of tune to the danger to its mission “to practice and promote the responsible use of the Earth’s ecosystems and resources” by ignoring the policy of subsidizing the burning of wood. Though the club is exclusively U.S. based it has a large international following. It should “educate and enlist humanity,” at least our European brethren, “to protect and restore the quality of the natural and human environment.”
Years ago when unlimited nuclear energy was thought to be a new and wonderful possibility the Sierra Club promoted a vision of a nation of large natural parks with islands of densely populated city states powered by nuclear fuel. It was a vision that France and Japan took up in the early 1970’s reaching 80% of their electric power needs and leaving great swaths of natural habitat between cities connected by high speed electric powered rail. Despite Japan’s Fukushima disaster, nuclear power is arguably environmentally sustainable and better than geography hungry solar farms pinching food from the world on the precipice of a massive global famine. Which brings up the other biofuel lunacy, Iowa farms raising corn to feed automobiles!
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