Orthodoxy in the Climate Movement: Franzen and His Deniers

[XemaSab]

Finally.

Finally, someone prominent is saying this.

Franzen’s main contention is that the overwhelming focus of most of the mainstream environmental movement on climate change has come at a steep cost: a shifting of that focus away from biological diversity issues.

Those of you who have been reading my work for a while won’t be surprised at my being pleased at this idea’s hitting the pages of the New Yorker. For a while, the climate change movement has seemed from my perch here in the desert southwest to have abandoned any concern for biological diversity. Those who bring up concerns that renewable energy development might actually harm wildlife or their habitat have been scoffed at, accused of being climate change deniers or (to cite an example from 2011 that my Coyot.es Network colleague Madhu still ribs me about on occasion) useful idiots.


Read more: http://coyot.es/crossing/2015/04/11/orthodoxy-in-the-climate-movement-franzen-and-his-deniers/#ixzz3XSEfrGTG
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[enough]

1. I would think climate change and loss of biodiversity are intimately and intricately linked.

That's certainly the impression I got from reading Elizabeth Kolbert's book "The Sixth Extinction."

[GliderGuider]

2. They are linked, but the loss of diversity is being driven by far more than climate change.

It's mostly due to habitat destruction by human expansion, in a process technically known as "Competitive Exclusion".
For example, this has happened without any serious anthropogenic climate change:

[hatrack]

3. See also: Chernobyl

In the Exclusion Zone, you've got wildlife flourishing - the European version of the grizzly, elk, wolves, cranes, eagles, lynx, Prezewalski's horse and lots more:

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/wildlife-chernobyl-exclusion-zone-bears-wolves-rare-horses-roam-forests-1477124

By implication, even a full-on nuclear disaster and the contamination of thousands of square miles of land with widely varying amounts of radioactive particles is far less destructive to wildlife and natural processes than routine human activities like farming, industry and transportation.

[Nihil]

5. +1 (n/t)

[pscot]

4. When my neighbor clears his lot

it will leave ground squirrels, wood rats, voles, 2 kinds of owl, flickers, creepers, towhees, chickadees, juncos, gold finches, several different sparrows and 3 kinds of woodpecker homeless. That's 1/3 of an acre and the list is far from comprehensive and doesn't include deer, crows, eagles, raccoons, coyotes or other critters that will just move on or up or regroup in less space overall. I can't say I'll miss the carpenter ants.

[phantom power]

6. the punchline: all this "overwhelming focus" on climate change is accomplishing dick