Losing some eagles may be a trade-off for clean energy

An author of the latest United Nations report on climate change says we must act “now or never” to limit carbon emissions. But Russia’s barbaric invasion of Ukraine threatens to take the “now” option off the table — unless we accept some unattractive trade-offs.

Among those painful choices is requiring a few majestic bald eagles to give what Abraham Lincoln called “the last full measure of devotion.” Their sacrifice must not be in vain.

The big picture: It is imperative, geopolitically and morally, to punish Russia by choking off its lucrative sales of oil and natural gas. But doing so sent gasoline and diesel prices skyrocketing. It has also left industrialized nations scrambling to find new sources of fossil fuels — and to reconsider attitudes toward methods of producing energy that have risks and side effects many of us would prefer to avoid.

President Joe Biden came into office promising that his administration would lead the world toward a clean-energy future. But his task right now is to lead the world in responding to Russia’s unprovoked aggression — which he has called genocide — and that means doing whatever he can to help other Western nations wean themselves from Russian oil and gas. Biden also has to be mindful that inflation, led by soaring gasoline prices, could be a decisive issue in November’s midterm elections.

Biden has announced the release of an unprecedented 180 million gallons of oil from the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve over the next six months. He has implored domestic oil producers to pump more from existing wells and drill more on existing leases.

All of these moves are in the wrong direction, in terms of saving the planet. Jim Skea, a British climate scientist, said the world needs “immediate and deep” reductions in carbon emissions if we are to limit global warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius by century’s end.

But if Russian fossil fuels are to be kept off the market, the gap cannot immediately be filled by clean energy. Biden and European leaders are ready to build the infrastructure that will eventually allow American liquefied natural gas, shipped by tanker, to replace Russian natural gas that flows through pipelines. But building those ports, ships and conversion facilities will take years.

For those, like me, who have serious concerns about the many safety issues nuclear power presents, it might be time to reconsider. Apocalyptic but extremely rare accidents might be a risk we need to accept, both in the short term to deal with the Russia-Ukraine crisis and in the long run to reduce carbon emissions to net zero.

Which brings me to those bald eagles.

Earlier this month, a subsidiary of NextEra Energy Resources, a company that operates 154 wind farms across the U.S., pleaded guilty in federal court to violating the Migratory

Bird Treaty Act and agreed to pay fines of more than $8 million. The company acknowledged that at least 150 bald or golden eagles had died at its facilities over the past 10 years, and that 136 of those birds had definitely been killed by flying into spinning wind turbine blades.

I am not unmoved. The bald eagle is our national bird, after all. But bald eagles are thriving across the country. The species was removed from the endangered list more than a decade ago.

Using wind turbines to generate electricity, meanwhile, has a carbon footprint far smaller than that of coal, natural gas or even solar panels.

I hate losing a single bald eagle. But I would hate even more losing our singular, endangered planet.