by DGR Editor | Oct 10, 2015 | Mining & Drilling
by Kim Hill
Ten things environmentalists need to know about renewable energy:
1. Solar panels and wind turbines aren’t made out of nothing. They are made out of metals, plastics, chemicals. These products have been mined out of the ground, transported, processed, manufactured. Each stage leaves behind a trail of devastation: habitat destruction, water contamination, colonization, toxic waste, slave labour, greenhouse gas emissions, wars, and corporate profits. Renewables can never replace fossil fuel infrastructure, as they are entirely dependent on it for their existence.
2. The majority of electricity that is generated by renewables is used in manufacturing, mining, and other industries that are destroying the planet. Even if the generation of electricity were harmless, the consumption certainly isn’t. Every electrical device, in the process of production, leaves behind the same trail of devastation. Living communities—forests, rivers, oceans—become dead commodities.
3. The aim of converting from conventional power generation to renewables is to maintain the very system that is killing the living world, killing us all, at a rate of 200 species per day. Taking carbon emissions out of the equation doesn’t make it sustainable. This system needs not to be sustained, but stopped.
4. Humans, and all living beings, get our energy from plants and animals. Only the industrial system needs electricity to survive, and food and habitat for everyone are being sacrificed to feed it. Farmland and forests are being taken over, not just by the infrastructure itself, but by the mines, processing and waste dumping that it entails. Ensuring energy security for industry requires undermining energy security for living beings (that’s us).
5. Wind turbines and solar panels generate little, if any, net energy (energy returned on energy invested). The amount of energy used in the mining, manufacturing, research and development, transport, installation, maintenance and disposal of these technologies is almost as much—or in some cases more than—they ever produce. Renewables have been described as a laundering scheme: dirty energy goes in, clean energy comes out. (Although this is really beside the point, as no matter how much energy they generate, it doesn’t justify the destruction of the living world.)
6. Renewable energy subsidies take taxpayer money and give it directly to corporations. Investing in renewables is highly profitable. General Electric, BP, Samsung, and Mitsubishi all profit from renewables, and invest these profits in their other business activities. When environmentalists accept the word of corporations on what is good for the environment, something has gone seriously wrong.
7. More renewables doesn’t mean less conventional power, or less carbon emissions. It just means more power is being generated overall. Very few coal and gas plants have been taken off line as a result of renewables.
8. Only 20 per cent of energy used globally is in the form of electricity. The rest is oil and gas. Even if all the world’s electricity could be produced without carbon emissions (which it can’t), it would only reduce total emissions by 20 per cent. And even that would have little impact, as the amount of energy being used globally is increasing exponentially.
9. Solar panels and wind turbines last around 20-30 years, then need to be disposed of and replaced. The production process, of extracting, polluting, and exploiting, is not something that happens once, but is continuous and expanding.
10. The emissions reductions that renewables intend to achieve could be easily accomplished by improving the efficiency of existing coal plants, at a much lower cost. Given that coal or gas plants are required for back-up of all intermittent renewables, this shows that the whole renewables industry is nothing but an exercise in profiteering with no benefits for anyone other than the investors.
Further Reading:
Green Technology and Renewable Energy
Ten Reasons Intermittent Renewables (Wind and Solar PV) are a Problem
The Myth of Renewable Energy
A Problem With Wind Power
Green Illusions: The Dirty Secrets of Clean Energy and the Future of Environmentalism
In China, the true cost of Britain’s clean, green wind power experiment: Pollution on a disastrous scale
Originally published on Stories of Creative Ecology
by DGR News Service | Jun 17, 2014 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Indigenous Autonomy
Deep Green Resistance stands in sympathy and solidarity with Don Celestino Bartolo and the farmers and residents of the municipality of Juchitan de Zaragoza as well as all those who live on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, as they suffer and resist Gas Natural Fenosa’s Biío Hioxo Wind Energy project. Like most large infrastructure projects, the Biío Hioxo Energy project ignores how indigenous communities use the land for food, sacred places, and community integrity. This project harms the land by destroying soils, forests, and natural spaces, as well as with noise and visual pollution.
Projects like this threaten the way of life of the residents of Juchitan de Zaragoza and the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, and destroy the land. It is typical of the destructiveness of civilization and the unbridled greed of capitalism. Biío Hioxo Energy also serves as an object lesson in the folly of green technology, and deserves our condemnation and resistance.
Indigenous peoples have always been at the forefront of the struggle against the dominant culture’s ecocidal violence. We are heartened by the strength of the people of Tehuantepec, who are resisting with strength and desperation. DGR offers its support and encouragement to those on the front lines of the fight to save the planet, and despite our lack of experience and membership in the region we will support the struggle in whatever way we can.
For more information on the Biío Hioxo project, see http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/12042
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Apr 26, 2013 | Mining & Drilling
By Max Wilbert / Deep Green Resistance Great Basin
The first Tar Sands mine in the United States is an open wound on the landscape: a three acre pit, the bottom puddled with water and streaked with black tar. Berms of broken earth a hundred feet tall stand on all sides. To the north and south, Seep Ridge Road – a narrow, rutted, dirt affair – is in the midst of a state-funded transfiguration into a 4-lane paved highway that may soon be clogged with afternoon traffic jams of oil tankers and construction equipment. Clearcuts and churned soil stretch to either side of the road, marking the steady march of progress.
This is the Uintah Basin of eastern Utah – a rural county, known for providing the best remaining habitat in the state for Rocky Mountain Elk, White Tailed Deer, Black Bear, and Cougar. In the last decade, it’s become the biggest oil-extraction region on the state, and in the last five years fracking has exploded. There are over 10,000 well pads in the region. And now, the Tar Sands are coming.
Thirty two thousand acres of state lands situated on the southern rim of the basin – some 50 square miles – have been leased for Tar Sands extraction. If all goes according to plan, the mine at PR Springs that I’m looking at would produce 2,000 barrels of oil per day by late this year, with planned increases to 50,000 barrels per day in the future.
Dozens of similar mines are planned across the whole region. Along with their friends in state and local governments, energy corporations are collaborating to turn this region into an energy colony – a sacrifice zone to the gods of progress, growth, and desecration.
Twelve to 19 billion barrels of recoverable tar sands oil is estimated to be located under the rocky bluffs of eastern Utah, mostly in the southern portion of Uintah County. It’s a drop in the bucket for global production, but it means total biotic cleansing for this land.
Crude oil, tar sands, oil shale, and fracking: these are the wages of a dying way of life, and the ozone pollution that is already reaching record levels in this remote, sparsely-populated region is evidence of the moral bankruptcy of this path. There is no claim to morality in this path. It leads only to death, for us and for all life.
Alongside the test pit and scattered throughout the landscape, drill pads for seismologic assessment and roads to the pads have already been cut through the forests and shrubs, leaving behind a patchwork of shattered sagebrush and mangled juniper – testament to the Earth-crushing consequences of this “development”.
Situated at 8,000 feet of elevation, this wild region is called the Tavaputs Plateau. Unmarked, often muddy dirt roads make travel dangerous, and deep valleys plunge thousands of feet to the rivers that drain the region – the White River to the north, and the Green to the west. Both flow into the Colorado River, which provides drinking water for more than 11 million people downstream.
Resistance to tar sands and oil shale projects in Utah dates at least back to the 1980’s, when David Brower and other alienated conservationists fought off the first round of energy projects in this region. Thirty years later, the fight is on again.
It is likely that the PR Springs mine will be the bellwether of Tar Sands mining in the United States. If the project is stopped, it will be a major blow to the hopes of the Tar Sands industry in this country, while if it goes ahead smoothly, it may open the floodgates for more projects in Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming.
That is why resistance to this project is so important. That resistance is building. Strong organizations based in Moab (Before it Starts and Living Rivers) and Salt Lake City (Utah Tar Sands Resistance and Peaceful Uprising) are working together to organize against the project, and individuals and allies have been scouting the site and preparing to take action this summer.
Campouts at PR Springs will take place in May and June with more gatherings likely throughout the summer. An action camp will take place the fourth week of July, with activists and concerned people from across the country gathering to support one another, prepare for action, and make plans. All are welcome.
Time is short. There is no time to waste, and we are few. If we are to succeed, we will need your help, your solidarity.
Looking out across a landscape that might soon be a wasteland, my gaze wanders across the juniper, scrub oak, and sagebrush that wrap gently over the hillsides and drop into the valleys. The setting sun casts waning light on the treetops, and a small herd of Elk climbs a ridge in the distance and disappears into the brush. Overhead, the few clouds in the broad sky fade from red to deep purple, then to darkness.
The last birds of the day sing their goodnight songs, and the stars begin to appear, thousands of them, lighting up the night sky and casting a dull glow across the countryside. I take a deep breath, tasting the cool night air spiced with the scents of the land.
The bats are out, flitting about snatching tasty morsels out of midair. I can hear their voices. They are calling to me. Tiny voices carrying across miles to whisper in your ear like the tickle of a warm breeze. “Fight back,” they say. “Please, fight back. This is our home. We need you to do what it takes to stop this. Whatever it takes to stop this. Whatever it takes.”
Whatever it takes.
_____________________________________________________
Companies involved in Tar Sands projects in the Utah include Red Leaf Resources (which also works in the Oil Shale business and is based in Salt Lake City), MCW Energy Group, Crown Asphalt Ridge LLC, and U.S. Oil Sands, a Calgary, Alberta based company.
Red Leaf Resources is currently working on a shale oil operation in the same region as the PR Springs mine, which could eventually produce 10,000 barrels of oil per day. Other large oil shale operations are planned for region by the Estonian company Enefit.
You can learn more about the resistance to Utah Tar Sands projects at the following websites:
http://www.tarsandsresist.org/
http://www.peacefuluprising.org/topic/current-campaigns/stop-tar-sands
Max Wilbert is a writer and community organizer living in occupied Goshute territory otherwise known as Salt Lake City, UT. He originally hails for occupied Duwamish territory known as Seattle, and organizes primarily with the Great Basin Chapter of Deep Green Resistance to fight injustice and promote strategies towards the dismantling of industrial civilization.
You can contact Max Wilbert at greatbasin@deepgreenresistance.org
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | May 3, 2012 | Obstruction & Occupation
By Steve Lyttle / Charlotte Observer
Six people were arrested Thursday morning in Catawba County after a group of protesters from Greenpeace and three other organizations blocked a train from entering Duke Energy’s steam-powered plant in Catawba County by chaining themselves to the tracks.
The group aimed the protest at Duke Energy, for its use of coal-powered plants, and at technology giant Apple. Leaders of the action said they are protesting Apple because it is using Duke Energy power for the expansion of its data center at Maiden in Catawba County.
“The group was able to stop the train from passing by,” said Molly Dorozenski, a Greenpeace spokesperson.
The Catawba County Sheriff’s Office confirmed that arrests were made. According to reports from the scene, four people who had chained themselves to the tracks were taken into custody, along with two others at the scene.
The action came at the same time as Greenpeace demonstrators were outside Duke Energy’s corporate headquarters in Charlotte’s uptown, protesting during the company’s shareholders meeting.
Dorozenski said the incident began Thursday morning when a train carrying coal arrived at the Marshall Steam Station. She said four activists chained themselves to the tracks, to prevent the train from delivering coal. She said other protesters put the Apple logo on train cars, to show the group’s belief that Apple is profiting by Duke Energy’s use of coal.
Greenpeace contends the use of coal is creating an environmental hazard, and that coal mining is damaging to the ecology of the Appalachia region.
Joining Greenpeace in blocking the train were members of Radical Action for Mountain People’s Survival (RAMPS), Katuah Earth First! and Keepers of the Mountains Foundation, according to Greenpeace.
“Duke is using data center expansion in North Carolina, like Apple’s, to justify reinvesting in old coal-fired power plants and even worse — as an excuse to build new coal and nuclear plants,” said Gabe Wisnieweski, Greenpeace’s USA Coal Campaign director.
“The climate and communities throughout Appalachia and North Carolina are paying the price for Apple and Duke’s short-sighted decisions,” he added.
Read more from The Charlotte Observer:
