Wind Energy’s Dirty Secret: Deforestation of the Amazon and Devastation of Indigenous Communities

08/01/23| By Dr. Joseph Mercola

Booming demand for balsa wood, used to make turbine blades for wind energy, is ravaging Amazon forests and indigenous communities — in the name of “green power.”

Story at a glance:

• The rapid expansion of wind energy has led to increasing demand for windmills and balsa wood to build them.
• The tropical tree is facing exploitation and being cleared from Amazon forests, causing potentially more environmental problems than the windmills it creates can solve.
• Wind turbine blades can be up to 328 feet (100 meters) long; each blade requires 150 cubic meters of balsa wood, which is several tons.
• China is a major consumer of balsa wood, purchasing 85% of Ecuador’s exports in 2020.
• The Open Democracy video, “A Green Paradox,” documents how the rush for balsa wood to create “green” wind energy has destroyed local indigenous communities and decimated ecosystems.

Balsa, a tree that’s native to South America, is a coveted resource. Growing up to 98 feet (30 meters) and ready for harvesting in just three to four years from planting, balsa holds the promise for high profits for those who grow them.

Adding to its value, balsa wood is flexible and light yet very strong, making it an ideal material for manufacturing bridges, skis, boats and wind turbine propellers.

In an ironic tragedy, however, the rapid expansion of wind energy has led to increasing demand for windmills and balsa wood to build them.

Now, the tropical tree is facing exploitation and being cleared from Amazon forests, causing potentially more environmental problems than the windmills it creates can solve.

Rush for balsa wood causes devastating deforestation

Wind turbine blades can be up to 328 feet (100 meters) long. Each blade requires 150 cubic meters of balsa wood, which is several tons.

With demand on the rise from Europe and China, “balsa fever” set in, particularly in Ecuador, the No. 1 exporter of balsa wood, which produces 75% of the global market.

Prices of balsa wood have also skyrocketed, rising 30% from 2015 to 2019, when balsa wood worth $219 million was exported from Ecuador.

China is a major consumer of balsa wood, purchasing 85% of Ecuador’s exports in 2020.

In the Open Democracy video above, you can see how the rush for balsa wood to create “green” wind energy has destroyed local indigenous communities and decimated ecosystems.

In June, the Achuar Nationality of Ecuador declared that it would not allow deforestation to obtain balsa wood in its territory.

In a social media post, they wrote, “Don’t make any investment, even if you cut down balsa you won’t be able to extract it, it won’t be sold.”

However, indigenous leaders bowed to pressure in some communities nonetheless, allowing loggers to retrieve the wood.

According to Open Democracy:

“It’s a decision that has caused pain, rejection and division among families and has had consequences for the ecosystem of the islands and for the river itself. The balseros bring alcohol, drugs and prostitution, and pollute the extraction sites with plastics, cans, machinery, gasoline and oil spills.

“They abandon used chains from their chainsaws. They eat the turtles and chase away the parrots, toucans and other birds that feed on the flowers of the balsa trees. The breakdown of ecosystems by illegal deforestation has profound impacts on the balance of local flora and fauna, which will never recover.”

The demand for balsa to construct more wind turbines has even led to a black market, in which the wood is being harvested without appropriate permits, leading to further environmental damage.

According to a report from the Universidad de Navarra:

“China requires so much balsa wood because it is implementing a plan for the construction of wind turbines in order to increase its own production of clean energy and rely less on coal, and with the goal also to position itself globally in the sector, as it has done with photovoltaic panels.

“In order to achieve the goals of the plan, the Chinese government has subsidized a large number of Chinese producers for the purchase of tons of balsa wood, which has boosted demand so much that it has also led to farmers in Ecuador producing it illegally, without official permits, and generating a black market.

“This black market is causing serious environmental problems, such as contributing to the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest to plant balsa and exploit it, so that communities living in the Amazon have been severely affected by the booming demand for such timber.”

Further, China declared in December 2020 that it intended to increase its use of wind and solar power by fivefold by 2030.

Wind turbines pose a ‘green paradox’

One of the cornerstones of the Green New Deal is the end of U.S. fossil fuel consumption in less than a decade.

Efforts are underway to install wind turbines on every U.S. coastline in order to generate enough power to run close to 10 million homes.

But the call for net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by using “clean” energy sources — like wind, solar and geothermal avenues — to meet 100% of U.S. power needs ignores the pitfalls of these “green” alternatives.

One study, for instance, found that meeting U.S. electricity demand using wind would require turbines to cover 12% of the continental U.S.

The Manhattan Institute reported:

“The land area of the continental United States is about 2.9 million square miles (or 7.6 million square kilometers). Twelve percent of that would be about 350,000 square miles (or 912,000 square kilometers). Therefore, merely meeting America’s current electricity needs with wind would require an area more than twice the size of California, which covers about 164,000 square miles (424,000 square kilometers).”

This isn’t even taking into account the ecosystems and local communities being destroyed by deforestation for balsa wood. It’s a “green paradox” of sorts, “solving” one environmental dilemma only to create another.

According to Open Democracy:

“Wind energy has already become a key aspect of global strategy and is set for further expansion in the coming years. But there are downsides to this boom. The deforestation pressure on balsa has been brutal for the Amazonian Indigenous people of Ecuador, while the pressure on regions in Europe to host new wind farms brings with it conflict.

“This has created a green paradox. We need to decarbonize the global economy as soon as possible, and wind energy is a central part of that equation. However, this form of renewable energy will not be ethical or sustainable until every component involved is guaranteed not to cause further harm to the planet and its people.”

How the green pact could destroy Amazonian communities

The Green New Deal (Green Agenda), “Build Back Better,” the Fourth Industrial Revolution (the transhumanist movement) and The Great Reset, officially introduced by World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab and then-Prince Charles in June 2020 — all exist to further and facilitate the implementation of Agenda 21.

Agenda 21 (Agenda for the 21st Century) is the inventory and control plan for all land, water, minerals, plants, animals, construction, means of production, food, energy, information, education and all human beings in the world.

The European Green Deal is more of the same — introduced by the European Commission in December 2019 to, in part, replace fossil fuels with “cleaner” energy sources.

But as Open Democracy noted, “As a result of the 2019 pact, the financial outlook for renewables, including wind power, boosted the number of wind farm construction projects in Europe, and added to China’s wind rush.”

Entire territories have already been destroyed:

“In September, when democraciaAbierta visited the Achuar indigenous territory, traveling down the Pastaza River, one of the areas most affected by balsa fever, we found that the territory’s balsa had already been completely deforested and that the balseros, in their determination to obtain more wood, had moved onto the Peruvian Amazon.”

What you need to know about the Green New Deal

Alex Jones, host of “The Alex Jones Show” and founder of Infowars.com, recently broke down the reality behind many “green” initiatives, like the Green New Deal. They’re part of the roadmap to global control and domination — or in other words, global totalitarianism.

As noted by Jones, globalists are cutting off fossil fuels while blocking viable energy alternatives. they’re collapsing borders, devaluing currencies and destroying old infrastructure — basically, they’re “destroying the industrial carrying capacity of the planet, to launch mass famine, societal degeneration and collapse, and war,” Jones says.

Then, the Green New Deal, and its “panaceas” like wind energy, will come in to save the day:

“Then they will pose as saviors, saying they’re going to stabilize the world with a global marshal plan of quadrillions of dollars, to bring in their Green New Deal. But first, they have to dynamite and blow up the old system.

“That’s why Prince Charles … gave that speech where he said, ‘We need a total military style mobilization, with more capital than is even existing currently on the world, to force the end of the old system, and the move to the new system.’

“The new system is doubling, tripling starvation every year. [It’ll be] forced medical tyranny. A world ID tied to a social credit score. Carbon tax. And then once they’ve annihilated the grassroots economy, once they’ve bought up all the farms, once they’ve centralized things further, they will then bring in the universal basic income.

“With that, they’ll be able to dictate how you live, where you can go, and that will be directly tied to your behavior. So, the entire world will be turned into a giant open-air, high-tech reeducation camp, here in the near future …

“People need to understand, this is very serious. And thank God for [president Jair] Bolsonaro in Brazil. Thank God for [prime minister Viktor] Orban in Hungary.

“Thank God for some of the other leaders we have around the world that are popping up and calling out The Great Reset, calling out the New World Order, and explaining to people that this is a global corporate hostile takeover of the planet’s biospheres …

“We are, right now, segueing into that system. And it’s really up to us whether they ever actually get it into place, but they’re certainly trying.”

Forests destroyed, birds killed — how green is wind energy?

Wind energy has become a poster child for the Green New Deal and its move toward green, sustainable energy. But the fact remains that virtually all mass-scale methods — whether it be for food, energy, or otherwise — have significant downsides, wind energy included.

Logging Amazon rainforests to create massive wind turbine propellers is the opposite of sustainable. Meanwhile, birds and bats — many species of which are already endangered — are suffering. It’s estimated that 600,000 to 949,000 bats, and up to 679,000 birds, are killed annually by wind turbines in the U.S.

But the number of wind turbines has increased significantly since these estimates were calculated, which means many more are probably affected. Areas, where wind farms are built, are also in peril, as the giant structures have a significant socio-economic impact.

In the rural Matarraña region in Spain, for instance, business owner Eduard Susanna told Open Democracy:

“Here we have a debate between the need for renewable energy, where wind farms have a clear role, and the need to preserve the territory, the landscape. This doesn’t sit well.”

As it stands, wind energy is falling into the trap of many “green” initiatives before it, claiming to offer a solution to save the planet while instead helping to destroy it.