‘Think globally, act locally”: Amazingly often, that principle leaves the environmental movement fighting environmental projects. And a major case of it may be coming soon to New York.
Indeed, New York City’s already gotten a taste of it: Just last year, Park Slope residents leveraged environmental-review requirements to sue the city to remove bike lanes by Prospect Park.
Enough copycat lawsuits could mean big bills for the city: In 2006, an environmental suit against San Francisco’s bike-lane plan kicked off a five-year legal battle that cost the city over $1 million; the project didn’t move ahead until it had produced a 2,000-plus page environmental review.
And the problem is far, far worse when it comes to green energy projects.
Nationally, environmental activists push the expansion of renewable energy — solar, wind, etc. But when industries work to implement those initiatives at the community level, local greens scream at the impact on their community; they’d rather keep the land as it is.
Or the waters: Environmentalists are part of the coalition trying to stop a cable that would bring cheap hydropower electricity from Canada to the city, warning of risks to the Hudson.
Even “clean” power has environmental costs. Wind farms routinely kill endangered birds and bats. Solar plants wreak havoc on traditional farming. Hydroelectric dams disrupt the habitats of aquatic animals. And all require hundreds if not thousands of acres of land.
The benefits, on the other hand, tend to be exported. Utilities usually send the produced energy elsewhere, and any benefits from lower carbon production are global. Thus, local costs outweigh local benefits.
The fight may soon play out in Manhattan. Developers are targeting New York Harbor as well as the Hudson River, Chesapeake Bay and many other bodies of water along the Northeastern seaboard for renewable energy projects. But these sites also happen to be home to the American Eel.
And a major green nonprofit, the Council for Endangered Species Act Reliability, claims that acoustic disturbance from offshore wind development threatens the survival of the eel; it says hydroelectric projects are already responsible for a loss of 90 percent of the species’ population over the past several decades. In August, the group sued the US Fish & Wildlife Service to list the eel under the Endangered Species Act.
If the American Eel is listed as endangered, many of New York’s 200-plus proposed and existing hydroelectric projects (as well as wind farms up and down the Atlantic) would face significant consequences. Each project could be subject to a federal review; if that finds that the project jeopardizes the eel, the agency could mandate substantial overhauls or shut it down entirely.
It’s a classic case of dammed if you do, damned if you don’t.
Alternative-energy development faces other political problems: Local lawmakers want to tax it; communities want to charge impact fees to build local infrastructure; Native American tribes worry about impacts on sites they consider sacred; the list goes on. And local preferences can trump global ones, thanks to environmental laws and regulations.
Green energy is supposedly a replacement for traditional fuels, but few environmentalists seem willing to give up much now in order to get to a green energy future.
Randy T. Simmons is the director of the Institute for Political Economy, Ryan M. Yonk the director of the Institute of Policy Analysis. Their new book is “Green vs. Green.”