Pirate's Cove

This isn’t really about the environment or the climate, is it

The Fight to Save the Joshua Tree Has a Surprising Foe—the Solar Industry

It’s difficult to describe how beautiful Joshua trees are, but when you drive into Joshua Tree National Park and see vast canyons filled with gangly arms, raised in haphazard directions, it hits you: this tree is different, this tree is special.

What you might not know is this: the Joshua tree is also an endangered, threatened species.

Well, at least, it should be. (snip)

Cummings spells out the rationale for the Joshua tree to be listed. “Climate change represents an existential threat to western Joshua trees. Even in the absence of climate change, the convergence of factors necessary for recruitment (read: reproduction) results in successful establishment of new seedlings only a few times in a century.” Cummings cites pollution, climate change, and drought, as inhibitors to the Joshua tree life cycle. This would all lead to the extinction of the Joshua tree within the century.

So, not really climate change, natural or anthropogenic or some combo.

California is on the forefront of fighting climate change, however. The state’s renewable energy goals include a requirement for 100 percent clean electricity by the year 2045 and a goal of reducing planet-warming emissions to 80 percent below 1990 levels by the year 2050. But, in order to achieve these goals, there needs to be a lot of solar energy—“more than has ever been built before,” says Shannon Eddy, the executive director of the Large-Scale Solar Association (LSSA), which represents utility-scale solar developers and owners. Solar companies in the Mojave, like EDF, which is in the process of developing a massive solar farm called Big Beau, believe fighting climate change through the production of renewables is more urgent than desert ecology sustainability efforts.

The Daily Beast obtained EDF’s permits for California Native Desert Plant Harvesting scheduled in July on the Big Beau project site. These were obtained a month before the CDFW hearing and the possibility that after the hearing removal of the trees would be exorbitantly expensive or impossible loomed large. Regardless, in July, EDF permitted the harvesting of over 200 Joshua trees. While this won’t necessarily lead to their direct endangerment, it’s an interesting paradigm for a solar energy company that markets itself as striving towards “providing future generations with the means to power their lives in the most economic, environmental, and socially responsible ways possible.”

So, really, it’s about making money and bilking the citizens of California with this “renewables” push, taking advantage of weak minded and brainwashed climate cultists.

Much longer article, worth the read, seeing the Excuse Making and such.