Recently there seems to be so much talk about carbon sequestration techniques and ideas about how to reduce the amount of carbon in the atmosphere I’ve been wondering…what happened to reducing emissions? With ideas of giant sequestering blades (Free air sequestration technologies ie-FAST) and clear cutting-regrowing forests every 50 years or so (http://sierraclubcalifornia.org/2010/09/30/clearcutting-endorsed-as-a-way-to-sequester-carbon/), and then the ideas about new forms of energy it seems like we’ve completely forgotten about the obvious solution to stop using as much energy. To me, all these new ideas about sequestering carbon and creating new forms of energy are misleading people into thinking that they will be sustained if they continue using energy the way they always have. What they are not clear on is that new forms of energy are not always sunshine and rainbows, they come with costs just as any other form of energy.

Wind farms can have aesthetic impacts on the previous rolling hills and amber waves of grain. They also definitely affect bird and bat populations. If a bat even flies close to the structure it cannot escape the force created by the blades which is actually so intense that the lungs burst. Here is an interesting article that goes in-depth into the issues created by windfarms: http://www.batsandwind.org/pdf/Wind%20Energy%20Development%20and%20Wildlife%20Conservation.pdf

Biofuel production is an obvious one in that it completely alters the landscape and takes away many valuable habitats. One especially big issue is that landuse change for biofuel production is occuring in some of the most biodiverse areas on this planet, tropical rainforests. Both the Amazon and multiple islands and areas in Southeast Asia are being converted at a breaknecking pace to monocrops of biofuel plants. We have also read about how many of these biofuel farms are not even sequestering as much carbon as initially thought, and also take up more land that would have been used as food production, thus creating ‘leakage’ (http://www.pnl.gov/main/publications/external/technical_reports/PNNL-18585.pdf) to landuse change in other areas of the world.

The negative impacts of solar include land use change and habitat alteration if we were to convert our deserts into solar-power producing machines. I see solar power as one of the better forms of new energy because it can be placed on roofs of already existing buildings and has little to no environmental impacts that way. But do not be fooled, because somewhere in the future there may still be negative impacts of this technology.

Overall, I’d say that there is no one solution, and that we need to use all the forethought and ingenuity that we have to work on all of these energy ideas. But first and foremost, we need to accept that we need to reduce our individual footprints. A good website to calculate this is: http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/calculators/. I think that this is not stressed enough in today’s society, that we need to change the way we live and use resources. We as a nation have an excellent opportunity in this part of history. We can change our lives to be more and more efficient and be role-models for those developing nations. We can show them that happiness is not in the things you own, amount of McDonalds you consume, or energy you use, but what you give back to your community and world.