The Patriot Post® · Destroying Green in the Name of Green

By Vijay Jayaraj

In March 1974, the women of a Himalayan village walked into the forest and wrapped their arms around the trees that loggers had come to fell. Fifty years later, we live in a different world. Activists and politicians now clear forests, fence off farmland, and kill wildlife, all under the banner of “going green.” The radical green movement has hijacked the language of conservation and turned it into a sales pitch for the renewables industry.

The Land: Forests Traded for Low Returns

The recent news from Virginia shows the scale of impact from this green philosophy. Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s new energy plan calls for 277,000 acres of new solar panels, half on forest and 40 percent on farmland. The state has about 30,000 acres of solar today. The plan multiplies that footprint ninefold and puts roughly 140,000 acres of woodland under glass.

Researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University found that half the land already used for solar in Virginia was forest. Construction brings its own damage. Regulators fined one developer, Energix, for erosion and stormwater violations three years in a row.

What does Virginia get in return? The Department of Energy reports that solar runs at a capacity factor of 23.4 percent in 2024, wind at 34.3 percent and nuclear above 92 percent. A solar panel delivers less than a quarter of its rated output over a year.

Apply those numbers to Virginia’s own plants. The Spotsylvania solar complex spreads 500 megawatts across about 6,350 acres of former timberland. The North Anna nuclear station runs two reactors of about 945 megawatts each and supplies roughly 15 percent of Virginia’s electricity. North Anna produces about 15 times Spotsylvania’s annual output. Matching it with solar would take some 95,000 acres. Which source truly spares the forest?

The Air: Birds Sacrificed Without Protest

My concern comes not only from reading about the environment but also from my work as an ecologist on avian conservation projects. Wind turbines kill birds. The scale varies by location, turbine design, species and operating conditions, but the problem is documented. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service identifies collision risks, habitat alteration, artificial lighting and other disturbances associated with wind facilities. Nearly 300 bird species have been recorded among fatalities at onshore wind installations.

The American Bird Conservancy estimates that 700,000 to 1 million birds die in U.S. turbine collisions each year. Researchers estimated that turbines killed 600,000 to 900,000 bats in 2012, and bats control the insects that ravage farm crops. Documented golden eagle deaths at western wind sites rose from 110 in 2013 to 270 in 2024.

The law bends for the industry. A NextEra subsidiary pleaded guilty after at least 150 bald and golden eagles died at 50 of its wind facilities, and prosecutors noted it never even sought a permit.

Wind turbine’s controversial footprint extends into the oceans as well. Only about 384 North Atlantic right whales remain, yet regulators have leased floating-wind sites in the Gulf of Maine, which is critical habitat for the species. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management concedes that offshore wind can put them at risk through vessel strikes, noise, entanglement and habitat changes that shrink their food supply.

No agency has linked a specific whale death to a turbine. That proves less than it seems. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has pointed to 109 strandings in 22 months near new offshore wind sites. The National Academies found that turbine effects on the Nantucket Shoals ecosystem will be hard to separate from other pressures.

Children in the Pits

Batteries — that support the “clean” EV industry and the backups needed for renewable power — are among the top drivers of the cobalt rush. It estimated that battery-manufacturing demand for cobalt grew 26-fold between 2000 and 2020. The Cobalt Institute reports that batteries consumed 212,000 of the 276,000 tonnes of cobalt demanded in 2025, and Congo mined 73 percent of the world’s supply. 

Children carry part of that load. A 2023 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences examined the relationship between Chinese renewables industry and artisanal cobalt mining in Congo. The U.S. Department of Labor also identifies dangerous cobalt-mining work among the worst forms of child labor.

UNICEF once counted 40,000 children in southern Congo’s mines, some as young as seven. One witness recounts how a 10-year-old named Lubo filled a sack with cobalt for about a dollar after his parents could no longer pay his $5 monthly school fees. Some of the unsupported tunnels for mining are prone to collapse and have buried diggers alive.

All this destruction rests on one justification, a climate emergency. Yet the climate has always shifted. Around the year 1000, Norse settlers grew barley in southern Greenland. No coal plants caused that warm period. A planet that warmed and cooled long before industry gives no license to fell forests and kill eagles today.

God gave us dominion to use creation wisely, not to sacrifice its forests, birds and children for a political goal. Paul warned of those who “worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator” (Romans 1:25). Today’s green movement reveres an abstract planet while it wounds the real one.

If a forest must be cleared, a rare bird put at risk or a child exposed to dangerous mining so that affluent consumers can celebrate their green credentials, the church must ask difficult questions. If a nuclear plant, a gas-fired generator or a responsibly managed mine can supply energy with fewer overall harms in a particular setting, Christians should be willing to examine that evidence.

Vijay Jayaraj is Research Associate for Developing Countries with the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, a Science and Research Associate at the CO₂ Coalition, and a Visiting Fellow at the U.S. National Center for Energy Analytics. He holds a M.S. in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia, postgraduate degree in Energy management from Robert Gordon University and has served as a research assistant at the University of British Columbia’s Fisheries Center in Canada.