These are the same people who scream for green energy and forcing Everyone Else to take the train
Can bighorns, a bullet train and a huge solar farm coexist in the Mojave Desert?
To most travelers on Interstate 15 between Barstow and Las Vegas, the Mojave Desert’s jagged Soda Mountains rise above a seemingly lifeless wasteland of hellish sand dunes, lava flows and vast flatlands.
But scientists say the scorched terrain just half a mile north of the Mojave National Preserve’s aptly named Devil’s Playground is a deceptively delicate and vital ecosystem rich in wildlife: tortoises, foxes, badgers, bobcats and bighorn sheep.
Now, proposals to build a high-speed electric rail linking Southern California to Las Vegas and revive a long-dead solar project in the area have triggered a clash with conservationists over how best to ensure that bighorn sheep populations do not become genetically isolated — or wind up as roadkill.
Of particular concern was a recent announcement that the California Department of Fish and Wildlife is reviewing a revised version of the controversial Soda Mountain Solar Project that includes requests for permits to “take,” or fatally injure, desert tortoises, and alter desert washes during construction.
“We can’t let this solar project happen,” said Chris Clarke of the nonprofit National Parks Conservation Assn.
“The value of this landscape and its habitat,” he said, “far outweighs the value of energy the proposed project would generate.”
Solar, wind, geothermal, hydrothermal, trains, etc, the climate cultists all say we should have them, but, that’s only theoretical. As soon as you try and actually do the projects, they look to shut them down.
State wildlife authorities will evaluate the project’s environmental impacts, as required by the California Environmental Quality Act.
“Let’s all take a deep breath,” said Chuck Bonham, director of state Fish and Wildlife. “The desert is an invaluable landscape, and any proposed solar project has got to go through a public process.
If these ever happen, it will take 20+ years, so, why bother?
Meanwhile
Scotland’s green-obsessed left-separatist government has been left with egg on its face by revelations that dozens of gigantic onshore wind turbines are having to be hooked up to diesel generators, leaking thousands of litres of hydraulic oil into the countryside.
Scottish Power — led by a Spaniard, Ignacio Galan, and actually a subsidiary of Spanish firm Iberdrola — conceded that some 71 of its turbines had to be hooked up to diesel generators to keep them warm in December, according to the Sunday Mail, with a whistleblower telling the left-leaning newspaper that problems with the turbines are deep-seated.
Oops.
Read: Good News: Greenie Weenies Look To Shut Down Mohave Solar, Bullet Train Projects »
While Americans were focused on a Chinese spy balloon making its way across the country, the Biden administration quietly released an al Qaeda terrorist radicalized by the September 11 attacks from Guantanamo Bay.
Looking cool is just the tip of the iceberg for Mikaela Shiffrin, Travis Ganong and the rest of the U.S. ski team when they debut new race suits at the world championships.
It may be months before American intelligence agencies can compare the audacious flight of a Chinese surveillance balloon across the country to other intrusions on America’s national security systems, to determine how it ranks.
CIA Director William Burns has revealed that Chinese President Xi Jinping has instructed his country’s army “to be ready by 2027 to conduct a successful invasion” of Taiwan.
