(Natural News)—As renewable energy projects falter, questions mount about their ecological and economic sustainability. From fried birds to unrecyclable waste, the hidden costs of green energy are coming to light.
- The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System in California, once hailed as a green energy marvel, is shutting down after a decade of ecological harm and financial failure.
- Offshore wind projects, like Atlantic Shores in New Jersey, are collapsing despite massive subsidies, leaving ratepayers to foot the bill.
- Wind turbine blades, made of non-recyclable materials, are piling up in “wind graveyards,” raising concerns about long-term environmental impact.
- Bird deaths caused by solar and wind installations are drawing scrutiny, with estimates suggesting hundreds of thousands of avian fatalities annually.
The Ivanpah solar plant: a monument to failure
In the Mojave Desert, the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System stands as a stark reminder of the unintended consequences of green energy projects. Built in 2014 with significant taxpayer backing, the plant was designed to harness solar power using thousands of mirrors to concentrate sunlight onto towers. Instead, it became infamous for its lethal impact on wildlife.
Federal wildlife officials described Ivanpah as a “mega-trap” for birds, with its intense light rays attracting insects and, in turn, birds that were incinerated mid-flight. Workers dubbed these tragic incidents “streamers,” referring to the smoke plumes left behind. At its peak, the plant was estimated to kill one bird every two minutes, totaling over 130,000 avian deaths annually.
Despite its ecological toll, Ivanpah struggled to meet energy production targets. Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), one of its primary customers, announced in 2025 that it would no longer purchase power from the plant. Two of its three towers will shut down next year, with the third likely to follow.
“It might have functioned merely as the world’s most expensive backyard bug zapper,” quipped the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Offshore wind: a costly gamble
While solar projects face scrutiny, offshore wind energy is also encountering significant setbacks. In New Jersey, Shell recently abandoned its 50% stake in the Atlantic Shores wind farm, taking a $1 billion impairment rather than completing the project. The state’s Board of Public Utilities canceled its request for a wind-energy provider, leaving the 2,800-megawatt project without a customer.
The financial burden of such projects often falls on ratepayers. A review by Whitestrand Consulting found that Atlantic Shores would have charged three times the market price for electricity, raising rates by 11% for residents and up to 15% for businesses. Over the wind farm’s lifetime, this would have cost consumers an estimated $48 billion.
New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, a staunch advocate for renewable energy, has faced criticism for prioritizing green initiatives over economic reality. “A once-in-a-generation opportunity,” he called offshore wind. Critics argue it’s more accurately described as a “once-in-a-generation failure.”
The problem with wind turbines: broken blades and unrecyclable waste
Wind energy’s challenges extend beyond financial viability. In July 2024, a massive wind turbine blade shattered off the coast of Massachusetts, scattering debris across Nantucket Island’s beaches and prompting a federal investigation. The incident raised concerns about the safety and reliability of offshore wind farms, particularly as similar failures have occurred in the U.K. and Germany.
Compounding the issue is the non-recyclable nature of wind turbine blades, which are made from fiberglass or fiber-reinforced plastic. As these blades reach the end of their 20- to 25-year lifespans, they are piling up in “wind graveyards” across the U.S. In Sweetwater, Texas, a 30-acre site is filled with stacks of discarded blades, some as tall as basketball backboards.
“The Biden-Harris administration has not indicated what or who it expects to deal with the mountain of waste,” noted the Institute for Energy Research.
The environmental impact of renewable energy projects is not limited to waste. The American Bird Conservancy estimates that wind turbines kill approximately 538,000 birds annually in the U.S., with raptors like golden eagles and migratory songbirds particularly vulnerable. Solar installations like Ivanpah have added to this toll, with hundreds of thousands of birds killed over the past decade.
Despite billions in subsidies, many green energy projects remain unprofitable. From Ivanpah to Atlantic Shores, the pattern is clear: without government support, these ventures cannot compete in the energy market. The failures of Ivanpah, Atlantic Shores, and countless other green energy projects serve as a cautionary tale. While the push for renewable energy is driven by noble intentions, the reality is far more complex. Ecological harm, financial unsustainability, and logistical challenges have exposed the dark side of green energy.
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Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
