Five things you may or may not know about sea turtles: They can live 80 years or longer. They're important to ocean and beach ecologies. They're immune to (and happily feed on) deadly box jellyfish. All seven species worldwide are either endangered or critically endangered. And solar panels might be their salvation.
People sometimes ask me why the Sierra Club is so focused on stopping dirty coal plants or fighting to get our country off of oil and onto clean, renewable energy sources. After all, you won't find pictures of wind turbines or solar panels in our Wilderness Calendar (at least not this year). Why not stick to protecting wild places and wild creatures -- like sea turtles and sequoia trees?
The answer is that we've never been more focused on saving wild places. But we can't succeed without also looking at the bigger picture. We must stop direct threats to habitat and species, whether it's from logging, mining, residential development, or other sources. But we must also address threats that might come from far away. And doing that almost always leads us back to energy -- whether it's the effect of climate disruption from burning fossil fuels or the increasingly harsh environmental consequences of extracting coal and oil.Read more at http://sierraclub.typepad.com/michaelbrune/2011/04/sea-turtles-puerto-rico-oil-drilling.html
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