The timing no doubt was coincidence, but while Interior Secretary Sally Jewell was celebrating the country's largest solar project in California, two U.S. senators were introducing legislation to protect desert landscapes in the state.
The irony wasn't lost on the National Parks Conservation Association, which has questioned the location of the solar farm.
“There is a lot of celebrating today in the California desert. Senator Feinstein released the California Desert Conservation and Recreation Act and Sally Jewell flipped the on-switch at Desert Sunlight Solar plant. The confluence of these events highlights the important work that remains to be done in the California desert," said David Lamfrom, NPCA's California Desert associate director. "That includes permanently protecting some of the most beautiful and vibrant lands in America and the continued need to do a better job of siting renewable energy away from species-rich lands. Considering how important our national parks and protected lands are to our desert economy, finding this balance now is fundamental.”
Earlier Monday, the Interior secretary and the director of the Bureau of Land Management Neil Kornze joined California state and industry leaders to “flip the switch” on the Desert Sunlight Solar Farm. Now operating at full capacity, the Desert Sunlight Solar Farm is providing 550 megawatts of electricity to the grid, enough energy to power 160,000 average homes. The facility is estimated to displace 300,000 tons of carbon dioxide per year – the equivalent to taking 60,000 cars off the road.
“Solar projects like Desert Sunlight are helping to create American jobs, develop domestic renewable energy and cut carbon pollution,” said Secretary Jewell. “I applaud the project proponents for their vision and entrepreneurial spirit to build this solar project and commend Governor Brown for implementing policies that take action on climate change and help move our nation toward a renewable energy future.”
Desert Sunlight is the sixth solar project approved on public lands that is now operational. Together with wind, solar and geothermal, the renewable energy projects built on public lands since 2009 are producing over 2,200 megawatts of power, or enough to power almost 700,000 average homes. An additional 2,500 megawatts is currently under construction, including eight solar projects in California and Nevada.
Desert Sunlight is located on about 4,100 acres managed by the BLM in Riverside County, about 70 miles east of Palm Springs and six miles north of the rural community of Desert Center. The facility uses more than eight million First Solar photovoltaic modules to generate power with no air emissions, no waste production and no water use. The thin film technology has the smallest carbon footprint of any photovoltaic technology. The renewable energy is sold to Pacific Gas & Electric Company and Southern California Edison under long-term contracts.
As part of the Interior Department’s commitment to responsible development of renewable energy, the Desert Sunlight project underwent extensive environmental review and mitigation. The BLM worked in close coordination with Desert Sunlight, the National Park Service and other stakeholders to significantly reduce the proposed project’s total footprint down from the proposed 19,000 acres. The BLM is requiring that Desert Sunlight provide funding for acquisition and enhancement of more than 7,500 acres of suitable habitat for desert tortoise and other sensitive wildlife species to help mitigate the project’s potential impacts.
Also on Monday, Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, both California Democrats, introduced legislation that would expand by 75,000 acres the Mojave National Preserve and Death Valley and Joshua Tree national parks.
“This piece of legislation is the final chapter in a long effort to preserve one of the most magnificent landscapes in the United States,” Sen. Feinstein said. “We must ensure that critical parts of the California desert—with its mountain vistas, bighorn sheep, mule deer, desert tortoises, Joshua trees, Native American petroglyphs and much more—will be protected for all time.”
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But still show China output more than doubling while the US is in decline. And even those numbers are pure speculation since China has only given a peak year not peak output. Not to mention the likelihood of China sticking to the agreement is virtually zero.
Happy Valentine's Day, good people. Now, let's remember to show some love. My wife just ran out the door to the Seattle Neighborhood Coalition meeting. I get to stay and "make love" to you!
Lee, God bless you for believing in love. China will come around. I hope so, but I do remain a student (and friend) of the late Garrett Hardin. The Tragedy of the Commons will always be with us unless some of form of discipline is imposed.
How are we to impose it on China? Are they not simply buying time at our expense? I agree to the need for faith, but what about the expense? Right now, dozens of huge container ships are anchored off all of our West Coast ports. As my late father-in-law, a former federal labor mediator, used to say when observing those ships: "They are filled with Chinese goods at the expense of American jobs." China nonetheless expects us to buy those goods and keep its culture/country/economy afloat. By the way, my father-in-law was a deep-blue Democrat. And when I bought a blazer from Nordstrom's--a non union shop--he didn't talk to me for a month.
Why are we talking to these guys? Because the euphemism is "free trade." Okay. Then who is it free to? Why is it not called "open trade?" Open is the truth; free is not. It's costing us--and costing us dearly--to prop China up at our expense.
The least China could do is protect the environment, but they're not even doing that. Why? My point is that they can't afford to because of excessive population. President Obama's point is that they "will" when they exchange poorer technologies for cleaner ones.
We'll see, come Valentine's Day 2030, whether he was right. But he will be long gone from office. And is that not the deeper point? When politicians make these deals, who benefits and who pays? Just who is getting the "free" ride?
Right now, our politicians are hoping they will get a free ride. They will not have to answer for what they hope to visit across all of our public lands in the name of "green." Interior Secretary Ken Salazar was among the worst interior secretaries I have ever seen. He believed in the "fast track," i.e., the environmental impact statement written in haste. Science? Just quote the last report. Perhaps the eagles are thicker in this part of the desert, but why care? Who needs to know? We need to get green. There is a heat wave coming and we need to stop it. And so he let the worst of the impact statements through.
I don't see that Sally Jewell is any better. Again, is this all worth making deals with China? Because that is why we are ultimately going green. They neither can nor will. At least, that is the president's argument. We must go first so they eventually can.
I don't buy it without the discipline. I would be sending all of those container ships back home. But then, I am not the president--or the secretary of the interior. I do know this, however. Every stick of clothing now on my back--including my Rockport shoes and L. L. Bean coat--was made in China, Thailand, Bangladesh, or Vietnam. I'll buy their clothes, but I will not buy the argument that we should wait for them to grow up. Nor will I allow my party--the Democratic Party--to blame it all on the Koch brothers in the hope that I won't think about what my "side" is doing to make these problems worse.
Tough love on a Valentine's Day. But then, it was the kind of country we used to be. The buck always stopped with the people in office. Now they are blaming us.
I agree with a lot of what you say, Dr. Runte. But at the same time I have to ask how many of those containers filled with Chinese products come to us as a direct result of profiteering schemes hatched by American companies and businessmen whose only concern is the bottom line?
Be it LL Bean, WalMart, or any of thousands of other American businesses who sold out their own workers, who is really responsible for this?
As you wrote yesterday, we are all trapped by THE SYSTEM. Who created THE SYSTEM? How can we begin to change THE SYSTEM or are we going to be content to allow THE SYSTEM to slowly destroy all America has ever hoped to be?
Who is pushing for the various "free trade" agreements and why?
Only when we can ferret out those who are creating and sustaining THE SYSTEM can we ever hope to change it.
I agree that we simply lack self discipline. Americans have become too accustomed to easy living. Too many Americans are too young to remember days when rivers caught fire and air in many cities was unbreathable or water undrinkable. Too many Americans are more concerned with coins jingling in their pockets than some of our old fashioned values of working together and trying to find solutions that would lift all instead of pushing some down.
The answer to all this lies not at either extreme of the political spectrum but somewhere in the middle.
But to reach that middle will require that some of us oldsters who recall the days before Mr. Nixon signed the environmental acts are able to educate the youngsters who, so far at least, seem unable or unwilling to look past the coins in their pockets.
There is something out there we seem to be lacking. An old fashioned thing called CAUTIOUS WISDOM.
And I love the last two sentences of your post above. Trouble is -- they are right when they blame us. After all, we continue to elect them.
Yes those businesses are trying to enhance their bottom line. That IS the purpose of businesses. Those boats are coming from China because American regulations and taxes make it more economic to manufacture in China than in the US.
I hope some of our friends will take time to read ALL of the article found at Kurt's link to World Resources. Especially be sure to scroll down far enough to take a long look at the charts comparing Historical Emission and Emissions per Capita.
That Emissions Per Capita is revealing. It illustrates the point that if Americans were willing to exercise some of Dr. Runte's Self Discipline or the GOP's Personal Responsibility, we could do a lot more to improve the world around us.
It's very easy -- and lazy -- to try to claim that excessive regulation or government interference is the cause of all our problems. To use a phrase popular in some circles, it's an excellent strawman. But may I submit that the real problem is far more complex than that alone? May I submit that it comes down, once again, to a lack of self discipline and corporate responsibility when profit is placed before the welfare of our nation and its citizens?
What is REALLY important?
Now instead of attacking me for saying this, how about presenting a reply to my questions? What is REALLY important?
It is not the responsibility of businesses to take care of the welfare of our nation or its citizens. Their function is solely to provide a return to their owners. Now often they can optimize that return by doing (or appearing to do) what is good for the nation or its citizens and more often than not the nation and its citizens benefit when corporations optimize their bottom line. But they have no obligation to do so.
One again a claim that was never made. However the claim that was made, regulations and taxes incentivise businesses to manufacturer outside the US, is undisputed fact.
Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness
Lee, once upon a time in my life, I thought only of being a teacher. That was what was really important to me. The national parks would become my subject and the environment my larger subject. Then something in America changed. And it changed among environmentalists, too. Brian Williams is just the latest victim of it, but our colleges and universities are also victims. Why do we send our children to college? Because they need to get a JOB. It used to be that the job would take care of itself. Now young people are instilled with the fear of failure, and so yes, all they think about is what pays. Thus even Brian Williams, at the top of his game, felt he needed to inflate his vita. Someone might be gaining on him, and that someone better schooled in convincing the public that exaggeration is the norm.
Here is how Peggy Noonan addressed the issue this morning in THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. "A longtime reader of this column, age 84, emailed recently to say the heartbreak of his life the past few years has been witnessing the daily corruption of all information--the rigging of numbers and claiming of facts, the scientific papers that manipulate data to advance a political agenda, the misleading government statistics. We're drowning in lies, he said."
Just so. When my colleague Dan Botkin dared even suggest that on these pages, half of you could not wait to rip his head off, and the other half to say "I told you so!" You dared not even think that ALL of you were wrong. That is what got us swamped in lies. Ever since Vietnam, we have been convincing ourselves we need to win the argument rather than learn the facts. If any single thing in this country is really important to me, it is getting past that phenomenon.
As Dan reminded me some days ago, there is so much bad science out there these days that good science no longer survives. It doesn't get funded; those scientists are never hired, because now everything about science is a political agenda. Same in history, I might add. Who wants to teach the national parks? Or the environment as a collective problem? The fashion statement is American guilt. EC may be wrong half of the time, but on that his facts are straight. You can't be a patriot anymore, lest you offend someone unpatriotic. These days, you are not allowed to love anything but yourself. Am I surprised that Brian Williams lied? No, I am only surprised that someone finally called it a lie.
Read Peggy Noonan this morning. There it is. Why we can't solve these problems anymore. We pay people to lie every time we allow them to call it something else. If no one is lying about climate change, they are lying when they suggest that we can stop it by insulting the land again. It does, however, make good press on the evening news. No time for facts; just enough time for a "personality" that will set the record straight. Cue Al Gore for another "interview," when it is substance the issue needs.
This election, let us all resolve to confront the issues instead of one another. The Traveler is unique in that the forum of national parks leads to so many other pressing issues. If you will, the parks are the canary in the coal mine. As we treat our parks, so we treat our politics. When the parks were strong, our leaders were strong--two Roosevelts among them. Could Hillary or Jeb be our next Roosevelt? If not, perhaps Lee is right that we should start looking in the mirror again. We have certainly had enough of our lesser brand.
In the spirit of the Valentine love of the day, I'd like to also invite any and all of the readers of this forum to let me know if you're coming to my corner of Alaska this summer or anywhen. We're both a cruise ship stop, and also driveable from the lower 48.
Whether Kurt, Lee, or ec, trailadvocate, or beachdumb, or someone lurking I've never heard of. I promise a safe and respectful space, I'll buy the first round of coffee or our Spruce Tip Ale, and I would welcome getting to know the real person behind some of the posted stuff and sharing local lore. Retired now after a couple of years of giving daily tours to the visitors, hopefully I can share a bit about the Klondike Gold Rush and the Days of 98.
This is a clean offer, no ulterior motives to those with whom I've had spats. It is sort of the same idea as 'National Coming Out Day' - when you get to know someone personally, you get more sensitized to them and less reactive. Plus I just like showing off our local piece of Alaska and the local national historical park.