December 11, 2013
Massachusetts, Opinions

Cohen: Hypocrisy OKs birds’ slaughter

By: Adriana Cohen | Boston Herald | December 11, 2013 | bostonherald.com

In a deadly irony, the Obama administration – which has fined energy giants millions for killing a few hundred birds – has given wind farms a virtual license to slaughter hundreds of thousands of them.

The nation’s new 30-year bird-kill permits are creating a glaring paradox: Isn’t the whole point of environmentalism to protect nature, not to destroy sea gulls, songbirds and even eagles?

Clearly two sets of rules apply when it comes to politically driven, liberal “eco” policies.

In 2009, ExxonMobil was fined $600,000 in court for killing 85 federally protected birds. The same year, PacifiCorp was fined $1.4 million for the deaths of 232 eagles in Wyoming, electrocuted by the company’s power lines.

If you’re a wind turbine company, you can apply for a permit green-lighting the killing of more birds and eagles for the next three decades without penalty thanks to an “administrative” waiver President Obama quietly signed Friday.

Is this political hypocrisy at its worst, or just more evidence that his administration’s environmental “policy” is really about the left wing’s quest to control people and specific industries it despises?

It sure looks like the latter. The Obama administration comes down hard on big oil, coal, natural gas and traditional power companies – just to name a few – even as it fails to protect wildlife from wind turbines.

“Instead of balancing the need for conservation and renewable energy, Interior wrote the wind industry a blank check,” Audubon President and CEO David Yarnold said in a statement. “It’s outrageous that the government is sanctioning the killing of America’s symbol, the bald eagle.”

Hypocritical, too, considering that a private citizen or hunter who accidentally kills a bald eagle is subject to steep fines and jail time. And what about the San Diego man who was arrested on felony charges last week for pruning overgrown hedges on city land next to his property?

But the butchering of hundreds of thousands of animals in wind “bird blender” turbines is A-OK simply because it falls under Obama’s renewable energy agenda du jour.

Bottom line: Laws arbitrarily implemented are no way to set public policy or run a country. It creates a quasi-banana republic where the rules don’t apply to those in power. Thanks to Hope & Change, this has become the “New Normal.”