Whale Tales: Bootlicking Big Oil
Good people,
Jevons paradox is when technological progress or government policy increases the efficiency with which a resource is used but the falling cost of use increases its demand, increasing, rather than reducing, resource use. It says it right there on Wikipedia. I started on the page for “monolith” and clicked around a few hyperlinks, absently, until God took over.
There are vocal dickheads who are screaming nonsensical doom screeds when any fish, anywhere, washes ashore. This thing has splashed its rotting, nautical corpse in the stagnant partisan public pool. I’m not a lifeguard, but George Costanza wasn’t a marine biologist and he gave it a shot. I don’t think green energy exploration is a bad thing, my opinion be damned. There are facts divorced from hysteria and emotion enough that I can just, like, look at them.
The jumpscare statistic is 65%, as in the amount of New Jersey coastline involved in this wind farm colony (best word for it). 365 wind turbines, 1 mile apart, as tall as the Empire State building, with blades as big as 900 feet.
The “incidental take” projection released for Ocean Wind, LLC’s project (read: Orsted, scary Dutch company given carte blanche of the Jersey Shore coastline by Murphy) lists 16 species that will be affected by the sonar testing process to secure locations for the turbines, and our friends the whales and their buddies the dolphins have won all the starring roles.
That’s just the fucking testing! The construction, the continual activity of corresponding underground cables, the material corrosion, the furious and relentless Unknown in all its spectral glory…
Thirty New Jersey mayors have called for a moratorium on all offshore wind activity until a thorough investigation into the whale deaths is conducted. THIS SOUNDS REASONABLE. However the angry shout factory from everywhere except New Jersey has started its infernal clanging and banging, if you are inclined to dive into the vile comment sections of your favorite platforms hosting news articles and discussions involving the windfarms. Any resistance to even halting this project, is deemed as bootlicking Big Oil (oil guzzling?) and other assorted hobos down that alley of thought.
Listen, all kinds of biologist-types and environmental people are putting together intelligent litigation, forming coalitions and generally going about this resistance in ways much more coherent than your Stone Harbor Karens and Fisherman Johns. They, too, have little in the way of credibility for those for blindly champion this project for some unknown, contrarian reasons. The convictions at play here can’t be genuinely environmentally-conscious without an angry insistence that the seismic testing and massive turbines in general absolutely cannot have any role, whatsoever, in the death of all these marine mammals. More will be revealed, or it won’t.
Swimmingly,
Whaleboy
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