[T]he environmental threats that matter are the slow, continuous ones, not the telegenic sensations like oil spills. BP’s spill is known to have killed just over 1,300 birds so far. Just one wind farm, at Altamont Pass in California, was until recently known to kill perhaps 1,300 birds of prey every year. If BP really wants to kill birds, it should indeed go beyond petroleum and into wind, an industry that kills far more rare birds per joule of energy produced than oil does.
Matt Ridley, “Natural resilience”, The Rational Optimist, 19 July 2010.
Biologist Matt Ridley (1958-) is author of several works of popular science, most recently The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves (HarperCollins, 2010). He is a former science editor of The Economist.
