I’m an Environmentalist. Biden’s Climate Plans Are a Mistake.

Sustainability isn't a technological problem

Welcome to Biocentric, a newsletter about sustainability, overshoot, greenwashing, and resistance. It’s written by me, Max Wilbert, the co-author of Bright Green Lies: How the Environmental Movement Lost Its Way and What We Can Do About It and co-founder of Protect Thacker Pass. If you want to follow, you can subscribe for free! Paid subscribers receive occasional behind-the-scenes reports and unreleased drafts, and support my activism.

I wrote this op-ed in 2022 and submitted it to news outlets around the country without finding a publisher, so I’ve decided to share it here. It’s shorter than the normal content I share here, but my father is in the hospital and my heart is with him. I recommend reading it together with this more in-depth piece on solutions which I wrote with my friend Elisabeth Robson.

The beauty of Thacker Pass, Nevada in undisturbed areas this late June. Photo by the author.

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As a longtime grassroots environmentalist, I think President Joe Biden’s climate change and infrastructure plan is a mistake.

I agree with Biden in some ways. Global warming is a very serious issue, and anything that restricts the fossil fuel industry is good for the planet. The problem is that Biden’s plans are aimed at the wrong target.

The Biden administration aims to replace fossil fuels with wind and solar power, while maintaining consumerism. He aims to replace gasoline cars with electric cars (EVs), while not challenging car culture.

According to a recent interview with the CEO of Toyota, more EVs will drive emissions up, not down, because most electricity still comes from fossil fuel sources. This is changing—but the energy transition is not an altogether good thing for the planet.

Greenhouse gases are just one of the ways we're harming the planet—and not even the most important. Global warming is a symptom of a deeper problem. We’re in the 6^th great mass extinction event in Earth’s history, which studies show is thus far mostly caused by habitat destruction, not global warming. Environmental groups and governments today focus on climate change, and often seem to forget overfishing, soil erosion and desertification, urban sprawl, oceanic dead zones due to fertilizer runoff, and the logging of forests.

In our rush to reduce carbon, wildlife habitat is being sacrificed to “green growth.” In California, for example, the clean energy plan promoted by Stanford Professor Mark Jacobson would result in more than 4,000 square miles of new wind energy development — an area four times the size of Yosemite National Park. And that doesn’t include transmission lines, energy storage, power substations, or solar.

These technologies are all made of metal, which means, as a recent headline reads, “mining is poised to grow during Biden years.” In Nevada, scarce groundwater is at risk for new lithium mines to serve the electric vehicle and battery energy storage market. These mines threaten thousands of acres of sagebrush habitat, golden eagles, pygmy rabbits, pronghorn antelope, and greater sage-grouse.

Rabbit superhighway at Thacker Pass in December 2022. The area pictured has now been bulldozed by Lithium Nevada for their open-pit lithium mine. Photo by the author.

Can we mine our way to sustainability?

In the American mind, success and economic growth have become linked. But we can change that. A responsible national environmental policy would start with a program to shrink the economy—starting with the most destructive industries like fossil fuels, mining, chemicals, and logging—while preserving people’s well-being.

If we combine this with educational programs, job retraining, and public works to help people understand the need for change, incentivize responsible choices, and build new skills in fields like sustainable agriculture, habitat restoration, appropriate technology, and creating vibrant local economies, we’ll be well on our way to a better future.

Yes, this will bring huge challenges. But while “degrowth” sounds radical to some, it shouldn’t. It’s basic arithmetic: if you have one living planet, and you destroy it: that’s one minus one.

Now is the time for a bold vision. Only by addressing the roots of the problem can we begin to find real solutions. This is a crisis. It’s time to think big.