Pirate's Cove

Reason # 4 why climate alarmists are nuts: they talk the talk, but, when push comes to shove, they will not actually allow alternative energy facilities to be built

The Mojave Desert in southeastern California is the mother lode of renewable energy. The sun shines about 360 days a year, making it hugely valuable territory for developers of solar power.

But the Mojave is also valuable to rare plants and animals and the people who want to protect them. That’s why Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) has proposed a national monument to keep some Mojave lands off-limits to energy development.

Some supporters of solar power worry that the establishment of a national monument in the Mojave could slow down the fight against global warming. But David Myers, director of the Wildlands Conservancy, says the lands were donated to the federal government for conservation. His organization raised $45 million to buy hundreds of thousands of acres, cleaned them up and then donated them to the government to preserve them.

Now, I will admit that I am not a big fan of the Big Solar Plant idea, as they take up huge swaths of land that needs constant sunlight. It takes 5 square miles of receptors to light up San Diego, which must be devoid of plant life. And we still need some way of providing energy during the dark times, as there is no way of holding that energy during those times. I am in favor of small facilities for neighborhoods, or, better yet, development of high capture panels used on individual homes, which will provide most of the power, reducing the load at existing large plants, reduce costs, and reducing environmental impact, and I am not talking about AGW. Certainly, batteries could be developed for home use.

And if you know this territory in detail, you know there’s a lot more here than just nothingness. Nearby are mountain ranges, sand dunes, ancient lava flows, fossil beds, endangered wildlife, cactus forests and American Indian pictographs.

So Myers was shocked when he discovered that the Bush administration had allowed energy companies to apply for permits to build large-scale solar projects on the donated lands.

Wait, what? It was bad that Bush was actually doing what the alarmists wanted, and giving energy companies the chance to actually build solar plants? How dare he walk the talk!

Solar power has the reputation of being green, (Myers) says, but its impact on the desert would be anything but.

“One project proposed to grade off all the native vegetation [from] 5,500 acres, bring in a quarter-million truckloads of gravel and put up a lot of industrialized buildings and then put a chain-link fence around it,” he says.

This is pretty much what will happen everywhere. Climate alarmists demand that these facilities be built, but won’t allow them to be built. It’s been mentioned time and again that with liberals it is all about intentions, not actual results. This was just another example.

Crossed at Right Wing News and Stop The ACLU