Protect the Environment from Woke Radicals
Almost everyone remembers Davis Guggenheim’s 2006 documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, which made Al Gore a lot of money and served as the launching point for the global warming cult. If the film had focused solely on mitigating the effects of rising global temperatures without claiming to know the cause, the film might have struck a chord with a majority of Americans. Instead, Guggenheim and Gore claimed that changes in the climate were almost entirely attributable to the burning of fossil fuels, which ignored millions of years of climate history where humans had no impact.
The backlash to these outlandish assertions from sensible Americans was immediate, and in the aftermath, a fatal mistake was made by conservative leaders who denied the climate was actually changing. Every snowstorm was proof the planet wasn’t warming, and while that may have played well to the base, Republicans lost credibility, especially when reports of record temperatures, droughts and dried-up lakes and rivers continued to roll in.
By the mid-2010s, the Democrats were perceived as the party most equipped to protect the environment and address climate change.
Woke Exposes Its True Intentions
Fortunately, for average Americans, woke progressives cannot accept a victory and move on. They always push the envelope to exploit an issue in a way that further restricts your choices and freedoms. In their blind vision of taking control over our nation’s energy production and distribution industries, they went big and began implementing a series of severe restrictions on internal combustion engines, coal, oil and gas production. At the same time, they forced utilities to provide unrealistic levels of solar and wind power. They have become so bold that recently, they floated proposals to restrict the sale of gas appliances and air conditioners.
The Coming Woke Environmental Disaster
As liberals lectured and preached environmental sanctimony, their poorly conceived policies took hold, and the results have been devastating and will only get worse. There is a laundry list of environmental, economic and personal catastrophe just up the road, unless we take swift, decisive action.
Electric Vehicles: EVs are an ecological disaster. They comprise less than one percent of the vehicles on American roads, but already the effects of battery production are being felt in graphite mines, primarily in third-world countries and China. Miners and local residents claim the graphite dust surrounding these mines is so thick, the air “shimmers”.
The dust from these operations settles on everything, stunting crop growth, contaminating drinking water and spoiling the food. EVs create 74% more CO2 compared to ICE vehicles and stress an already overtaxed electric grid. Because of the enormous weight of the batteries, EVs can weigh up to 4000 pounds more than a similar ICE vehicle. In an accident, EVs become a deadly battering ram. Battery waste disposal is also an issue.
Solar: Because of its unreliability, solar energy will never be the panacea liberals hoped for. A developed nation cannot rely on a power supply system that’s inflexible and doesn’t fit the needs of consumers. Solar panels produce far too much electricity when it isn’t needed and not enough during peak demand. Utility operators struggle to balance demand with supply as they grapple with wildly fluctuating costs.
Worse, the underlying ecological catastrophe we’ll be facing in the near future has been hidden from the American public. Thin-film solar panel manufacturing results in hazardous byproducts like Cadmium-Telluride, Copper-indium-gallium-Diselenide and Gallium Arsenide. Additionally, the problem of solar panel disposal has yet to be addressed by the industry or environmentalists. Experts predict that by the 2050s, solar panel waste could exceed 78 million tons annually. By 2035, it’s possible that discarded panels will exceed new unit sales by 2.56 times. Recycling solar panels is not a viable option, since they’re primarily comprised of glass and plastic, two materials with virtually no value. Currently, it costs $20-30 to recycle a solar panel, while sending it to the dump costs around $2. When solar trash is figured into the equation, the cost of generating solar energy increases by a factor of four based on current projections.
Finally, as if all that wasn’t bad enough, it’s highly likely that when the solar trash issue becomes problematic for city landfills, local, state or even the federal government may classify solar panels as hazardous waste, which will require adherence to strict and costly disposal regulations.
Wind: Wind power suffers from the same unreliability as solar, which is why many experts believe non-hydro renewable energy will never account for over 10% of a developed country’s total energy consumption. However, the ecological issues with wind generated power are even more severe. Landfill waste from enormous obsolete or failed wind generating equipment is expected to exceed 720,000 tons over the next 20 years.
Recently, from New York to Europe, whales have begun to die in unusually large numbers in places with large concentrations of off-shore wind turbines. In fact, 29 sperm whales died on English, Dutch and German beaches alone between January 9th and February 4th of this year. Woke environmentalists, who love the control that comes from deciding who will and will not receive rationed energy, were quick to dismiss the link between the turbines and the death of the whales. However, a growing number of impartial marine biologists believe the sound and vibrations from these massive machines disrupt the whales’ sonar communications and result in deafness, dooming these magnificent creatures to a painful, unnecessary death. Loud acoustics also pose a hazard to marine animals whose swim bladder is affected by the high decibel levels surrounding wind turbines.
Republicans Must Become the Guardians of the Environment
For some inexplicable reason, Republicans have traditionally shown a reticence to engage liberal Democrats on critical issues relating to the environment. Over the years, the pattern has been to deny the problem, and when that becomes untenable, look for the solution that causes the least amount of impact on Wall Street.
However, in their relentless pursuit of totalitarian power, woke zealots have left themselves vulnerable to legitimate questions relating to the environmental impact of their radical and misguided attempts to address climate change. If the Republican party is looking to steal a traditional Democrat issue in 2024, much like the Democrats stole the patriotism issue in 2022, here it is. This stuff is real, and the environmental calamity we will face as a society and a nation is unimaginable unless we get on top of it quickly.
Republicans can become the protectors of the environment if they’re perceptive enough to recognize the opportunity. If they’re looking for meaningful hearings in the House, start with dangerous EVs and solar panel waste because our children’s future depends on it.
