Owning the Libs at the Expense of Jobs

A few months ago, when environmental organizations started urging people to reduce their use of single-use plastics like straws and plastic bags, conservatives on twitter mocked them, urging people to use more. Meanwhile, endangered whales are washing up dead on our shores, killed by ingesting thousands of pounds of plastic water bottles, bags and other trash in the ocean. The earth’s environment has taken a beating in the post-industrial age. Instead of addressing the problems, conservatives like to ridicule solutions to own the libs.

Now, state Senator Harry Brown is owning them again by banning wind farms in North Carolina. Brown claims the wind farms threaten military bases in the state. The problem with his claim is that the military has to sign off on the those farms and they don’t have a problem. I suspect Brown and other conservatives really just have disdain for clean energy that reduces carbon output, because, like the twitter hacks who don’t believe plastics are a problem, they don’t believe climate change is a concern, either.

Brown and company can ban the farms in North Carolina but they won’t stop the wind farms off our coast. Already, companies are planning to put them off the coast near the North Carolina-Virginia border but outside of North Carolina’s jurisdiction. The hostile attitude toward wind energy is driving away potential jobs and revenue from the state.

I suspect Brown and company still have pipe dreams of fracking and oil rigs instead of windmills. The fracking is probably never going to happen despite the legislature’s best efforts. The amount of natural gas in our shale deposits is too uncertain and the glut from states like Pennsylvania, North Dakota and Texas make drilling too risky and expensive. Maybe we’ll get oil rigs off the coast of North Carolina, but they’re a long way off and they threaten our coast with environmental impacts that could damage an already thriving tourist industry.

Read more: https://www.politicsnc.com/owning-the-libs-at-the-expense-of-jobs/