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Jim: jdipeso@rep.org
(253) 740-2066 / 2010
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Can't Solar Energy and Wilderness Get Along?
February 2, 2010
We need more solar energy. And we need more land designated as wilderness.
Solar
energy and wilderness. We need both. They shouldn’t be pitted against
each other. There is a danger that they could. People of good faith in
the solar energy and wilderness stewardship communities shouldn’t allow
it.
California’s Mojave Desert has two things in abundance –
sunshine that pours gigajoules of energy onto the desert’s creosote
benches, and wide open spaces where one can experience the wilderness
values of solitude, silence, and nature “untrammeled by man.”
The
Mojave Desert is where solar energy could break permanently away from
its image as a niche product celebrated by off-the-grid counterculture
types but of limited value to an energy-hungry industrial civilization.
It’s where emissions-free energy technologies can show their stuff and
bury the bearish tirades of skeptics who insist that there is not and
never will be a practical alternative to fossil fuels.
The
Bureau of Land Management is reviewing proposals for seven
“concentrated solar plants” in the Mojave. Most of the projects could
rival a coal-fired bruiser in energy production, without coal’s baggage
of heat-trapping carbon pollution, toxic mercury emissions, and
disfigured landscapes.
The Mojave Desert also is a place close
to millions living in the giant urban centers of Los Angeles, San
Diego, Las Vegas, and Phoenix, who are only hours away from
experiencing wild nature on a scale large enough to appreciate and to
reflect on the reality that creation is ruled by titanic forces that
will forever overshadow man and his pretentious ways.
Obviously,
acres of solar energy reflectors and wilderness preserves cannot
co-exist on the same piece of ground. Hence the potential conflicts
between clean energy and land protection.
The Mojave Desert is
big enough to accommodate both, but it would take some planning guided
by a vision that both are important. Local governments do this all the
time. It’s called zoning. Industrial facilities go here, residential
developments go there. Both are accommodated in ways designed to
minimize conflicts between two very different land uses that each have
a place in the community.
Senator Dianne Feinstein has
introduced legislation that would set aside about 1 million acres of
federal land in the desert as two national monuments with the evocative
names Mojave Trails and Sand to Snow. Her bill also would add some
73,000 acres to Death Valley and Joshua Tree National Parks and to the
Mojave National Preserve.
In addition, the bill includes
language designed to streamline permitting for solar energy projects
and to prod federal land management agencies, including the Defense
Department, to identify suitable locations for solar energy development.
The
bill could go further. It sets aside 300,000 acres for off-road vehicle
play, which is far less important to America’s national security,
economic prospects, and public health than solar energy development.
Surely, the bill could allocate some acreage for generating solar
electricity, which is vastly more important for America’s national
security, economic prospects, quality of life, and public health than
ripping around the desert on dirt bikes.
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