Do we need to destroy the environment to save it?

That's the question I faced a few years ago.

I co-founded a movement that was the precursor to the Green New Deal.

It was called the New Apollo Project.

If we could send a man to the moon, we reasoned, surely we could save our own planet.

All we had to do was harness the power of the wind and the sun and get rid of fossil fuels.

Compared to the original Apollo mission, how hard could that be?

Well, it turned out to be very hard, practically impossible, in fact.

The basic laws of physics and chemistry proved to be very stubborn.

But as I did more and more research, something else began to trouble me.

The prospect that pushing the planet toward wind and solar energy

would actually cause more harm to the environment than good.

There's no better example of this than what wind and solar energy do to birds.

Industrial wind turbines, those giant generators of wind power,

are the greatest new threat to golden and bald eagles.

But the eagles are hardly the only ones threatened.

Condors, owls, hawks, and falcons all fall prey to the turbines mighty blades.

Big wind, and believe me, there's a big wind industry now,

just like there's big oil and big pharma.

Claims that house cats kill more birds than wind turbines.

That's true, but whereas cats kill small common birds like Sparrows,

wind turbines kill big, threatened with extinction and slow to reproduce species

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