Eco Report – September 8, 2023

Hello and welcome to Eco-Report. For W-F-H-B, I’m Julianna Dailey. And I am Cynthia Roberts. Later in this half hour, we hear from Marilyn Bauchat of Uplands Network, an aspect of the Hoosier Chapter of the Sierra Club, about their conservation initiatives and upcoming events. And now for your environmental reports: Inside Clean Energy reports onshore wind energy is working on a comeback in the U.S. market.  This is odd to say considering that land-based wind farms are the country’s leading source of renewable power. But it reflects a market in which utility-scale solar and battery storage are growing at much faster rates, and offshore wind is on the cusp of substantial growth. At the same time, onshore wind suffered through a rough 2022. The industry had 8.5 gigawatts of new projects go online last year, which was the lowest number since 2018 and less than half of the record high from 2020. Wind energy manufacturers felt the pain from this downturn, with layoffs and financial losses. Negative press in Indiana has taken a toll on new wind farms. Critics say wind farms are an intrusion into nature in that they have concrete foundations. In addition, their blades can kill high-flying bats and birds — a reality opponents often use to argue against this form of renewable energy. The coal industry is the source of much of the criticism. Actually the pad for a wind turbine is well under an acre, and the landowner typically receives $5,000 per year. Critics also feel no need for honesty. Nationally, wind turbines kill about 200,000 birds and bats per year, well behind collisions with vehicles and buildings. Cats kill 10,000 times as many bird deaths as wind turbines. But the industry is now shifting back into growth mode thanks in part to tax credits under the Inflation Reduction Act, said Ryan Wiser, a senior scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Some Republican officeholders vow to kill Biden’s Infrastructure Plan -they favor fossil fuels. —Norm Holy Since late April, wildfires have been burning across Canada, blanketing the country and parts of the U.S. in unhealthy and sometimes dangerous smoke, in what Canadian wildfire officials have called the worst wildfire season ever recorded. In a new study, scientists from the World Weather Attribution Initiative examined the conditions that lead to the record series of wildfires and concluded that they were at least twice as probable due to human-caused climate change.  The study, “Climate change more than doubled the likelihood of extreme fire weather conditions in Eastern Canada,” was conducted by scientists from the Netherlands, Canada and the United Kingdom. The area burned by this year’s wildfire season in Canada is bigger than Greece, reported The Guardian. More than 34 million acres have been burned — more than twice the previous record. That area represents approximately 13 billion trees.  This year, high temperatures led to the rapid thawing and disappearance of snow during May, particularly in eastern Québec, resulting in unusually early wildfires, said Philippe Gachon, a researcher at the University of Quebec in Montreal, as reported by The Guardian. —Norm Holy