A scandal erupted on some foreign platforms (Europe and the USA) around my material about the dangers to nature from so-called 'green energy.' The reaction was off the charts, even on environmental platforms of major international organizations. The fact is that in Russia, the 'green energy' agenda is not yet so acute and remains very costly for many: buying an electric car, for example, is not just a problem with charging stations but also the expense of maintenance, purchase, and storage.
In the far West countries, nobody is surprised by an electric car or solar panels on the roof. Meanwhile, there is massive hype around two 'environmental' agendas: the transition to green energy and carbon emission taxation, or the 'carbon agenda,' which I have been talking about for a long time.
Both sectors represent interests with annual multibillion-dollar profits, and experts expect explosive growth in these markets worldwide over the next 15 years. As demand grows, so must the supply!
In my material, I referenced new scientific research where scientists warn: the transition to 'green energy' requires an increase in the scale of rare earth resource extraction. This, in turn, can only be done in protected areas because other regions are generally unable to provide the industrial volumes needed. Over the past decades, resources have already been extracted!
Scientists say there is now a direct threat to at least over 4,000 species of vertebrates due to humanity's transition to 'green energy.'
I published a detailed material on this, and our people in Russia fully understood the problem, and the data resonated. However, in the western segment of the environmental community, it caused a storm of indignation: even dirty insults directed at me.
The largest environmental organizations have long been politicized and lobby for big business interests. Naturally, the 'green' and 'carbon' agendas are new markets for monopolization over the next few decades, which are being vigorously promoted worldwide. I am not saying that, for example, transitioning to alternative energy sources is bad.
No! I am only saying that we need to carefully assess the impact of 'green energy' on global ecosystems, which are already on the brink of destruction. We need only safe mining methods, limitations on environmental pressure, including the safest production methods possible! But we lack all of this.
What do we see today?
Business is simply rushing into the last refuges of wildlife, expecting a sharp increase in demand for rare earth resources in the coming years. States, in the interests of business, are beginning to pass legislation that legalizes even more 'development' of wild nature, including reducing the protection status of existing protected systems.
For example, Russia. Only recently, officials tried to openly abolish and appropriate the country's conservation rent! We barely managed to fend off such a bill when they shamelessly wanted to strip the Russian Ministry of Natural Resources of the right to control the country's protected system and simply divide it among the regions, allowing them to abolish and alter the boundaries of wildlife refuges.
We also know that the Lago-Naki plateau in Adygea is being built upon — a unique nature reserve listed in the UNESCO World Heritage. We know about the development of the Valley of Geysers in Kamchatka. And even the sacred ancient Lake Baikal is under threat, with authorities attempting to legalize clear-cutting of ancient forests.
People think in a time frame of at most one calendar year. TNCs (transnational corporations) plan their economic model for the next 10-20 years, and the authorities do the same! But what happens next? No one cares.
Now they all know that the world is moving towards 'green energy.' Demand is growing! Hence, supply must be ensured to turn the 'money flows' in their favor and extract colossal profits by supplying rare earth resources from our country worldwide.
These things are hard to understand when you are under constant pressure from accepted norms and agendas. That's what I faced: complete rejection of our position in European and American countries, leading to a storm of abuse and attempts to disprove my views.
They say that it is not true, that the transition to 'green energy' does not threaten wildlife, and cannot threaten it in the future.
If only they could meet the defenders of the Khopersky Nature Reserve in the Voronezh region, who have been fighting tooth and nail for years to protect their black soil from business and authorities planning to mine nickel. Millions of tons of nickel lie in local lands, but the same land is a wildlife refuge — a sanctuary protecting endangered plants and animals from humans.
For many years, the confrontation has been ongoing, but business and authorities do not let go! They are simply waiting for the moment when society weakens and can no longer resist the predation of industrial giants. When society weakens, they will simply enter this land and destroy the sanctuary to extract precious nickel.
Nickel is one of the key elements for the world's transition to 'green energy.' It is needed for modern electric vehicle batteries and energy storage systems: lithium-ion batteries, hydrogen energy, wind turbine systems, and so forth.
The world desperately needs nickel, and this is just one of the rare earth resources requiring the 'development' of the last reserves worldwide. These interests aren't just for short-term profits. No, this is an economic model for the coming decades. Both authorities and big business understand this.
But at what cost? A unique nature reserve, a wildlife refuge, will simply be destroyed. How many species of animals will be exterminated? Microorganisms? Trees? How many will be destroyed immediately, in a chain reaction? What will be the consequences for the entire region of the Russian Black Soil over decades?
No one is making such assessments, except for civil society! Except for local residents and the few experts who understand the gravity and danger of destroying protected land. They understand because they live there! This is their land, their home, their homeland. Their children will grow up here. Their ancestors lived and died here.
Everyone else, it seems, is incapable of understanding this. And in countries where the 'green energy' and 'carbon tax' agendas are rapidly gaining momentum, people sincerely begin to believe in the pure intentions of states and TNCs.
I encountered a complete lack of understanding of these processes. People genuinely laugh, mock the need to protect nature! People try to justify in any way the destruction of the last corners of life, and even when presented with real scientific assessments, they only become more aggressive and defensive.
What to say? We will correct this by awakening people one by one, gathering the strongest in this world — all those ready to be part of the Biosphere's immune system, not a dangerous cancerous disease.
The first step to solving any problem is awareness, understanding, and willingness to act.
© PAVEL PASHKOV
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The destruction of nature has become planetary in scale: over the past 50 years, wildlife populations have declined by 73%, forests are being cut down, rivers are polluted, and ecosystems are degrading. The last remaining nature reserves are isolated and increasingly under pressure from states and corporations. To stop this crisis, the global protected-area system must be urgently changed. We propose a concrete plan — the Territories of Full Ecological Tranquility (TFET) — and are setting out on expeditions to develop their future boundaries.
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